by Rachel Caine
“No,” he said. “It’s because you’re young and you refuse to acknowledge what you are. What it means. What it promises. You’re fighting your condition, and that makes it almost impossible for you to control yourself. You need to admit it to yourself, Michael. You’ll never be human again.”
Last thing I wanted to do, and he knew it. I stopped playing for a few seconds, then picked up the thread again. “Fuck off,” I said. “Feel free to take that personally.”
He didn’t answer for a long moment. I glanced up. He was still watching me.
“You’re still not yourself,” he eventually said. “And you’re speaking like your scruffy friend.”
He meant Shane. That made me laugh, but it sounded hollow, and a little bit desperate. “Well, Shane’s probably right most of the time. You are an ass.”
“And even if you think it, you rarely say it. Which rather proves my point.”
“I’m fine.”
“Are you? Because you’ve not asked a thing about your girlfriend, whom you left on her own in the middle of a vampire district, at night.”
That sent an electric jolt of shame through me. I hadn’t even thought about it. I hadn’t spared a single thought for Eve all the time I’d been in here; I’d been too wrapped up in my own misery, my own shame. “Is she okay?” I asked. I felt sick, too sick to even try to keep on playing. The guitar felt heavy in my hands, and inert.
“She’s becoming annoying with her repeated demands to see you, but yes, otherwise, she’s as well as could be expected. I made sure she got home safely.” Oliver paused for a few seconds, then leaned forward with his elbows braced on his knees, pale hands dangling. “When I was . . . transformed, I thought in the beginning that I could stay with those mortals I loved. It isn’t smart. You should understand this by now. We stay apart for a reason.”
“You stay apart so you don’t feel guilty for doing what it is you do,” I shot back. “I’m not like you. I’ll never be like you. Best of all, I don’t have to be.”
His eyebrows rose, then settled back to a flat line. “Have it your way,” he said. “The canned blood had an effect on you, yes, but not as much as you might believe. That was mostly you, boy. And you need to find a way to control that, because one day, you may find yourself covered in blood that doesn’t come from a punctured can.”
The way he said it chilled me, because it wasn’t angry; it wasn’t contemptuous; it was . . . sad. And all too knowing.
I let it drop into the silence before I said, “Eve wants to see me.”
“Perpetually, apparently.”
“I think I’m ready.” Was I? I didn’t know, but I ached to see her, tell her how sorry I was.
Oliver shrugged. “It’s someone’s funeral, if not yours.” He moved fast, out the door before I could make any comeback, not that I could think of a good one anyway, and I clutched the guitar for comfort. My fingers went back to picking out melodies and harmonies, but I wasn’t thinking about it anymore, and it didn’t feel comforting.
I was afraid I wasn’t ready, and the fear was a steady, hot spike that made my throat dry and, horribly, made my fangs ache where they lay flat. I didn’t know if I was ready to see her. I didn’t know if Oliver would care to stop me if I went off on her.
But when Eve stepped in the door, the fear slipped away, leaving relief in its wake. She was okay, and back to her fully Goth self, and what I felt wasn’t hunger, other than the hunger anybody felt in the presence of someone they loved.
The shine in her eyes and her brilliant smile were the only things that mattered.
I had just enough time to put the guitar aside and catch her as she rushed at me, and then she kissed me, sweet and hot, and I sank into that, and her, and the reminder that there was something else for me other than hunting and hunger and lonely, angry music in the night.
“Don’t you do that again,” she whispered, her black-painted lips close to my ear. “Please, don’t. You scared the hell out of all of us. I didn’t know what to do.”
I relaxed into her embrace, and breathed in the rich perfume of her hair, her skin, the subtle tingle of blood beneath her skin. I didn’t like to think about that last part, but maybe Oliver was right. Maybe I needed to stop denying it, or I’d end up in an even worse place, in the end.
“I didn’t know what to do, either,” I whispered back. “I’m sorry. I could have—”
“Stop.” She pulled back, staring at me fiercely. “Just stop it. You could have hurt me, but you didn’t. You didn’t hurt anybody, except that stupid machine. So relax. That’s not you, Mike. That’s some B-movie monster.”
But I was the B-movie monster, too. That was what Oliver meant, in the end; I was exactly that, and I had to remember it. It was the only way any of this would work.
I forced a smile. “I thought you liked B-movie monsters,” I said. My girlfriend punched me in the arm.
“Like, not love,” she said. “You, I love.”
I held out my hands, and she twined her fingers with mine. Warm and cool, together. “I don’t know how to do this,” I said.
She laughed a little. “Dating? Because, news flash, big guy, we’ve been doing it awhile.”
“Being this. Being me. I don’t know who I am anymore.”
She stepped closer, looking up into my eyes. “I know who you are. More importantly, I know what you are,” she said. “And I still love you.”
Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she’d never looked into the heart of the red and black tormented thing that lurked deep inside me. But looking at her now, at her utter sincerity and fearlessness, I couldn’t help but think that maybe she did, after all. Know me, and love me.
Maybe, in time, she’d be able to help me understand and love my monster, too. Because, in the end, it was always Eve. And always had been.
And I bent close, put my forehead against hers, and whispered, “You make me real.”
From the doorway, Oliver cleared his throat, somehow managing to make it sound as if he wanted to gag at the same time. “You’re free to go,” he said. “Congratulations. You’ve passed.”
“Passed what?” Eve asked, frowning.
“They wanted to see if I’d hurt you,” I said. I focused past her, on Oliver. “You were my test. And I won’t hurt her, not ever. You can count on that.”
He raised his eyebrows, without any comment at all, and left.
• • •
The vending machine suffered another accident the next day. And then the next. It wasn’t just me. My best friend, Shane, took to the idea of vandalism with frightening enthusiasm. So did Claire (surprisingly), and Eve . . . but it wasn’t just the four of us sabotaging the damn thing, because at least twice when I went to enact some mayhem, I found it was already nonfunctional.
The last time, I saw someone walking away from the machine, which had a snapped electrical cord. He was wearing a big, flaring coat, but I knew him anyway.
Oliver paused at the door, looked back at me, and nodded, just a little.
And that was the last time they fixed the machine. The next day, it was gone. I felt a little tingle of phantom hunger, of disappointment . . . and relief.
Because some things just aren’t meant to come out of a can.
DARK RIDES
It was probably inevitable I’d get around to writing about carnivals and Morganville, right? Yeah. I thought so, too. But this one is unique, even so, in that I have Michael and Eve off on a mission together, from Amelie. Hijinks and life-threatening danger may ensue. Also, a brand-new vampire character that I really need to explore more, because I liked him a lot.
Fun factoid: I used to work in a haunted house—not a carnival but one of those seasonal death traps that was set up fast and taken down faster, run by virtual amateurs. Working as a character in them is fine for me, because I’m in on the mystery and the joke, but I am
completely unable to handle haunted houses any other way as “fun.” They really do creep me out. Also, I got stuck in one of the secret passages of that seasonal haunted house once, and nobody notices or cares if you’re banging on the door and yelling for help when everyone is screaming already. (Yes, I intend to write that murder mystery someday.)
There’s something deeply creepy about an unlit Ferris wheel in the dark. It looks like the skeletal remains of something large that once rolled across the earth scooping up screaming victims in its buckety jaws. Or at least, it looked like that to me, but I naturally have a pretty macabre imagination. “Wow,” I said, looking up at the outlines of the black girders against the fading dark blue of the sky. “You take me to the nicest places. I am so lucky to have a guy like you.”
“Eve! Shhhh,” whispered Michael, my significant sweetie, as we crouched down between a blown pile of trash and the iron-shuttered side of some kind of cheesy win-a-toxic-stuffed-animal booth. This one specialized in rabbits. They all looked manic and a little diseased. I couldn’t help but fill in the old-time Elmer Fudd voice in my head. We’re hunting wabbits. It made me giggle a little breathlessly, with a nice knife-edge of terror, because we were in a closed amusement park, looking for a vampire, and hey, who doesn’t get the giggles now and then under those circumstances?
Don’t answer that.
Michael was giving me his I’m concerned and a little disturbed look, which was adorable. I’m not a fragile flower. Hell, I was born and raised in Morganville, Texas, which is likely the only place vampires can call home; if you grow up human there, you learn how to deal with life-threatening danger the way other, luckier people learn to deal with those annoying telemarketers. I don’t eat danger for breakfast, because it’s really just a tiny little bite-sized snack in hometown terms.
Michael, meanwhile, was the same . . . but different. He’d also grown up human in Morganville, but unlike me, he’d had the seriously bad misfortune to actually be bitten, almost two years ago. It hadn’t gone well for him, and now, my all-time best guy ever was . . . well, fanged. But fighting to stay the Michael I’d always loved, which was nice, because we were, well, married now. Fangs and all.
He couldn’t have looked less bloodsucker-y, really. Gorgeous blond hair, clear blue eyes, the face that in earlier ages they would have put on a really hot marble angel—not vampire material, generally. He even dressed as if he were a regular dude who was looking forward to being of legal drinking age. . . . I wondered if he ever lamented the fact that he was going to be carded for all of his immortal life. Probably.
Me, I looked like I was aspiring to be what he actually was, what with my Goth black hair (temporarily streaked with electric blue, because, why not?), and the baggy black cargo pants and stomp-’em boots. My shirt was tight, sheer, black over black, and had a particularly cool dark-blue-on-black embossed skull on it. Fighting clothes, although Michael had just shaken his head when he’d seen what I decided to wear for our middle-of-the-night tour of the scary carnival grounds. He just didn’t know what was stalking-appropriate, obviously. Men. No fashion sense.
“Over there,” Michael whispered, and nodded toward—of course—the haunted ride. It was what the carnies called a dark ride, which I thought was awesomely appropriate, especially tonight, what with all the creepy skulking around. The structure featured an absolutely gigantic Grim Reaper leaning over the top of it, gripping his scythe in one bony hand as the other reached down for the would-be riders. It probably looked super cheesy in the daylight, but tonight, I could practically see those black, flowing robes ripple in the cold wind.
If I believed in omens, that would probably be a really bad one.
“We’re looking for Death? Found him,” I said. I got another look, but also a smile. “Right. Stealth mode, engaged.” I made a zipping motion across my mouth. He did me the favor of not quite rolling his eyes.
We crept from the cover of the toy shed to that of a greasy-looking shack that dispensed hot dogs of doubtful meat content (oooh, but they had funnel cakes!), and then made it to the shadows next to the dark ride itself. The roller coaster was making a thin, high, creaking sound in the wind, and across the way, a shadowy carousel’s painted horses leered at me with wild eyes.
God, I loved this place. I wondered how Michael would feel about running away to join the circus.
Michael had paused, listening, doing that vampire-senses thing; I was content to wait for him to get back to me with a plan. I was just glad he’d asked me to come along as his backup. Usually our mutual buddy Shane got that job; to be fair, Shane was big, strong, and built for quality mayhem, but he was trying to cut down on the fighting, and I was happy to help that along. I’d seen all of us wearing sporty black and blue too much lately. Not the Goth kind. The bruise kind. Much tougher to accessorize.
We were operating on a bona fide secret mission, dispatched by the Founder of Morganville herself, the vampire Amelie—an ice-cold queen of a lady, and I was not on her list of Most Favorite right now, but I was incidental to this plan. Michael was her agent. Hmmm, he’d looked so nice in a James Bondian tuxedo at our wedding. . . .
I had to shake myself and put away the hot mental image for later. We—or he, more precisely—had work to do. This carnival was two towns over from Morganville, so we had to be on serious best behavior. This wasn’t home, with its peculiar rules and dangers. It was the real world, which was in many ways more dangerous for us, because whatever the rules might be, we probably didn’t fully understand them.
This was one of those no-name traveling shows that still honored the old tradition of “novelty acts” . . . or, more properly, freak shows, which I’d read about in books. Books that responsible adults frowned upon, but I’d lapped up as a kid. Said “novelties” usually included ancient mummies that were usually fakes or so badly mauled it’d take that dog-headed Egyptian god a week to put it back together . . . and, of course, the usual set of human oddities. Real tall, real short, real fat, fake facial hair, fake shape-shifting acts . . . and this one had one actual, real vampire, locked in a cage just like the mangy tiger and the totally depressed lion. That was a “special” freak show, only for high-rolling customers who got off on seeing what they assumed was a guy in makeup biting the neck of a partner in crime . . . only he was a real vampire, and those were real victims, and Amelie wanted it stopped, immediately.
She wasn’t concerned about the human lives being lost, of course. That was never going to be any vampire’s primary concern. She wanted to rescue the neck-muncher, and make sure nobody ever caught a clue that there was such a thing as a real, genuine vampire in their midst. Oh, the carnies knew, of course—if they hadn’t known before grabbing said bloodsucker, they certainly had by the time they started feeding him victims.
If Michael had received instructions on what to do about that situation, he didn’t tell, and I didn’t ask.
Right now, we were paying attention to one of the carnies making the rounds, checking to make sure everything was locked up and turned off. He was a big, burly guy—a roustabout or a strongman—and he was carrying a flashy knife on his belt, plus a wooden baseball bat, the better to beat you with, my dear. From the look on his face when he came out of the dark ride, it didn’t seem that security was his favorite job in the world when nothing happened. He looked more like he hoped to find an excuse to use the bat on something that would beg him to stop.
Michael suddenly cocked his head. In the moonlight, his eyes still had small pupils, like I would have had in full sun. Great night vision, vampires. One of the many depressing advantages they had over the breathing version of humanity. He squeezed my hand, gently, and nodded toward the ride that Batty McMurder was just leaving. Oh, great. Perfect.
No, I really meant that. Perfect! I practically wiggled with excitement. I loved haunted house rides, because, hello, mechanical scares, nothing actually dead and lurching in there. Well, normally. Tonig
ht might very well be an exception.
We hurried across the open ground. Michael didn’t make any noise, and I tried to minimize mine, but the thump of my combat boots still sounded way too loud. He stopped me before I jumped up on the deck of the ride, urgently making a shushing motion; I eased up carefully, and immediately saw why—it creaked . . . a lot. Moving slowly made the creaking sound more like the general creepy noise made by the wind, and less a neon We’re up in your business, sneaking around sign.
Michael kept hold of my hand, and led me under the leering glare of the Grim Reaper into a darkness that smelled like mold and engine oil. And boy, I mean darkness. It was a close, claustrophobic kind of inky emptiness, and except for the tight grip of Michael’s cool hand on mine, I wouldn’t have been able to tell it from space. No, I lie. At least in space, there are stars.
From the feel of the floor under my boots, we were on some kind of raised wooden walkway—probably a maintenance area. I felt a rising panic as we kept walking. What if something fell on me, like a giant hairy spider? It was Texas, after all, home of all kinds of stinging, biting, poisonous creatures. I wanted to hold up my free hand and sweep the air in front of me, but that was kind of useless; Michael was going first. He’d keep me safe.
It was a bit of a shock when I saw that the darkness was going a little gray, and at first I thought there was something wrong with my eyes, but no. There was a thin strip of light up ahead, on the left, like what would escape under the bottom of a door. It revealed an upright coffin with—appropriately enough—a cheap-looking mechanical dummy dressed in vintage Dracula drag, which would probably launch out at the creaking, trundling carts when the power was on.
There was a hidden door behind Dummy Drac.
We crossed the tracks, and I stepped carefully to avoid tripping any switches or getting my boots caught in the rails. I was glad I’d worn the heavy things, because a rat ran out of the dark and raced over my laces, heading for cover on the other side. I managed not to squeak, though there might have been a dry rattling in my throat. Might.
