“I used to be a vampire hunter. All of the band was,” he goes on. Jenny’s expression is concerned and a little distressed, like she can’t tell if he’s lost his mind or playing a cruel trick. “I… well. Vampire hunters don’t exactly die in their beds when they’re ninety. I never thought about what would come later, though. I never thought about this.”
“Then you’re an idiot,” Sofie says coolly. “This is why I have no time for hunters. You’re so caught up in being the thin red line between the vampire scourge and the daylight world that you think strategy begins and ends with orchestrating little skirmishes. You never think about how much more use you’d be if you worked in a way that would keep you alive in the long-term. Vampirism’s a problem with a long, long lifespan. Hunters are a solution that don’t have a lifespan at all.”
“Don’t talk to my brother like that,” snaps Jenny, because her loyalty to Will apparently trumps any suspicion she has that he’s gone crazy.
Sofie cocks one eyebrow. “Who does more good, the suicidal soldier who takes out a few enemies on his death rampage, or the careful infiltrator who finds the cracks in the enemy’s chain of command and weakens their whole system from within?”
“That’s a flawed hypothetical. I’m still here. Still fighting,” Will retorts, just as determined to back Jenny up as Jenny was to defend him.
He’s not, though. Still fighting. He hasn’t seen any other vampires, except for Gretchen and her brothers, since he ran away. He hasn’t yet had a chance to test whether he’s still a vampire hunter or not.
“You’re barely dead,” Sofie replies, still sounding sure and condescending. “You’ll change. You’ll see.” Then, suddenly, her expression changes completely in the rearview, eyes widening in surprise and shock. “Wait, stop, pull over! Motherfucking son of a bitch, fucking shit dammit fuck.” She opens her door and jumps out before the car’s come to a complete stop, running over to a spot on the curb a little way ahead of them. There are a few strange, unfamiliar symbols drawn in lines of white paint on the dark gray cement. Sofie stares at the small shapes for a long minute, still cursing under her breath.
“Hey, language,” Will scolds, standing a little way behind Sofie.
Jenny snorts. “I already know all the rude words, Will, it’s okay.” Then, to Sofie, Jenny asks, “Is that some vampire hieroglyphic language or something?”
“No,” Sofie answers, ignoring the sarcasm in Jenny’s voice. “It’s hobo symbol code. Tramps started it back in the 1930s to pass messages on to later visitors to a place. Some of the symbols are the same as they were back then, and some are newer. Like, this one here-” She points to one in the sequence. “That’s ‘unsecured wireless network’. But this one here -” She points to another. “That’s one of the old symbols. It means ‘Vampire gathering in town soon, get out’.”
She stands and walks back over to the car, sitting in the back with her legs out the open door. She rummages in her knapsack and pulls free a slim netbook computer. “Transients and the homeless do all they can to keep tabs on what vampires are doing, because transients and the homeless are the most at-risk population. A lot of people would probably be grateful if they knew that vampires keep homeless numbers low.”
She types away, grimacing in frustration as she tries to find the information she wants.
“Holy shit,” Jenny says softly, standing next to Will beside the car, watching Sofie at work. “It’s true, isn’t it? You’re telling me the truth.”
Will doesn’t know what to say to that, apart from “Yes,” so that’s all he says.
Jenny takes his hand in hers and squeezes. She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, opens her eyes, then nods at him with a small, shaky smile. “Right. I’m glad you told me the truth, at least. Thank you for that.”
“Okay, I think I have a date and location for the gathering,” Sofie says. “Shitting fuckballs, it’s the night after tomorrow night, fucking son of a —”
“Dude, language, my baby sister is right here!”
“Dude, I am fifteen, quit the baby sister shit.”
“Yeah, here’s where it is,” Sofie goes on, completely ignoring them both. “I’ve got the street, anyway, and it’s usually easy to tell which place on the block is the vampire house. Do you know where the 1200 block of Pennsylvania street is?” she asks Jenny.
Jenny nods. “Yep, totally. That’s in Capitol Hill. There are vampires there? Whoa.”
“I’ll have to check it out,” Sofie decides. “Gatherings like this, there’s usually at least one child in danger on the premises. Old societal niceties and traditions make it customary for the host to cater to all tastes. Santa Monica will have to wait a few days.”
Will sighs, swearing softly to himself. Sofie aims her one-eyebrow move at him, this time using the expression as a wordless question.
“I was just wishing that I knew where these two fr… these two people I know were now. Really good hunters.”
“’Really good hunter’ is like saying ‘really clever preschooler’,” Sofie says dismissively. “I still wouldn’t want one of them as my backup.” She taps the touchpad a few more times, types a few keystrokes in, and clicks again. “Are their names Anna and Ross?”
“Russ. How did you -”
Sofie turns the netbook screen so Will can see. It’s a snapshot photo of Anna and Russ on an empty, hilly street at night, their eyes caught by the flash of the camera. “It’s easy-peasy to find info about hunters online. Vampires don’t live for hundreds of years by being idiots.”
“I have real trouble taking you seriously as a badass when you use words like ‘easy-peasy’.”
“They’re in San Francisco,” Sofie goes on, ignoring Will’s remark. “I figured they were the ones you were talking about. Newcomers to the area, Chicago accents. Anyway, they aren’t here, so they’re useless. And I don’t need help.”
“I’d like to help, if I can,” Jenny offers quietly. Sofie looks at her in surprise, then gives a carefully casual-looking shrug as if it makes no difference to her either way.
San Francisco. Not that far from Santa Monica, not compared to how far Will’s come already. Maybe after he gets Sofie to her destination, Will can go there. Find them, and say… what? There’s as little for him to say to them as there is for Sofie to say to Jay. Will still isn’t sorry for letting Lily live, even with all that’s come since. He’ll never be sorry.
~
A year before Lily and Will died, shortly after the four of them moved into the warehouse, Anna and Russ had a brief fling, and then stopped having sex after Anna had to buy a pregnancy test from the pharmacy and it came back positive. Russ went with Anna to the clinic and he borrowed bunches of books from the library, the true crime stuff she loved, for her to read in the two weeks she spent feeling too sore and vulnerable to play shows or hunt.
Anna and Russ didn’t sleep together much after that, but nonetheless seemed to draw closer as a couple. They became a unit, totally comfortable with one another.
“Do you think that can happen? Two people staying in love, without sex?” Will asked Lily one day. She shrugged.
“I dunno about you, Will Cooper, but I think we’re doing fine,” she answered. Then stole his glasses and ran away, laughing.
LILY
Lily and Jay walk through the evening, no destination in mind, their words dried up in the face of their inability to be a comfort to one another. The starving looking to the starving for sustenance.
They run into Tommy and Michelle in the manga aisle of a bookstore and end up, in that weird way that one topic can lead to another can lead to another, sitting around on the footworn carpet of the music biographies section, talking about their strangest romantic interludes.
“I go to this bereavement support group—out-patient stuff, because I’m never letting my parents talk me into getting admitted to a psych hospital again, not on your fucking life,” Michelle offers. “And we were having a Christmas party. The counsellors took
us all out to see some comedy at the movies and then for pizza. Real seasonal activities. Some guy and I ended up necking in the bathroom of the restaurant. He was such a creep. Who goes to a support group to pick up, seriously?”
“You did,” Tommy points out in a dry voice, and Michelle throws her head back and laughs.
After Tommy and Michelle go off to do ordinary things in the ordinary world, Lily screws her courage up. “Let me come with you. I want to talk to Blake.”
Jay chews on his lower lip. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”
“Nothing we’ve ever done is a good idea,” Lily points out, and knows that he can’t really argue with that.
They catch a cab and Lily winds the window down, wishing that the blast of icy air that batters her face as they drive through the dark would quell the churning in her gut. She’s angry and afraid and cold and numb, but she’s none of these things to a big enough degree to drive her on. She wishes she felt something big enough to blot all else from her mind and memory.
The house is ordinary. Expensive and well-kept, but there are no turrets or bats or fat yellow full moons in sight. Not even a crack of lightning or a cobweb. Just a sleek little security keypad beside the old-fashioned front door, a fingerprint scanner and iris reader, the only indication that anybody inside might have a greater reason than normal to keep their privacy intact.
“Nobody’s home upstairs,” a vampire says to them as soon as they’re inside. He’s pretty—Lily, who finds most people pretty in one way or another, has not yet seen a vampire who’s any less than lovely—and seems completely unsurprised to see either Jay or Lily.
“Thanks, Mikhail,” Jay replies with a skittish smile. Interesting. He’s not close with all the vampires in this gang, then. Lily notes that fact, storing it away for a future day when it might come in handy. Jay turns to Lily. “I can show you the studio, if you like. It’s mostly been mixing and remastering lately, but sometimes bands use it to record.”
Most of the studios Lily’s spent time in have been DIY affairs, set up in attics and basements by friends of friends with lots of passion and not much money. She doubts that this house will have any space that resembles those rooms, dusty and cramped and full of the drive to create meaningful sound.
Jay leads her up to the second floor of the house where the preserved antique fixtures of the ground level give way to airy spaces and technology. The equipment and instruments all look state-of-the-art, and Lily can’t help but imagine what a joy it could have been to record in a place like this with Will and Anna and Russ. They would have been able to try all sorts of sounds that were beyond the scope of the tools they’d had.
Lily’s about to ask Jay about what musicians have been in to do recordings, if there’s any that he can play for her, if he’s ever watched the process in action, when suddenly they’re not alone. Two vampires join them in the largest of the rehearsal spaces—Jay had been showing her the restored upright piano recently added to the room—and all of Lily’s words dry up and die on her tongue. If she were human, she’d break out in a prickle of cold sweat.
One of the vampires is on his cell phone, speaking rapid French. The other is looking at Lily with something that she’s almost tempted to call pride, mingled with lazy interest. He smiles hello at Jay, who smiles back so brightly that Lily knows that this one must be Blake.
The call ended, the other vampire turns to Blake and frowns. “Nicole’s had a rash of miscarriages among the mares. Some of the younger girls are quite devastated. Amy wants to hear from you.”
“Oh?” Blake answers, tone mild. The other vampire’s glare looks like it could melt glass.
“Don’t give me that. You know as well as I do that it’s fucking Cora again. Jesus, Blake, how long are you going to turn a blind eye to this? I thought after… after Timothy, that we finally saw eye to eye on this!”
“Calm down. Lillian, this is Alexander. You probably don’t remember meeting him,” Blake says, smirking. Alexander continues to ignore Lily, so Lily decides to do the same in return. Weirdly, she doesn’t hate Alexander for killing her. She’s killed at least a couple of hundred vampires since she became a hunter. She’d known that sooner or later, one would kill her. It seems stupid to hate Alexander for being the one who got lucky.
But Blake, oh, she’d like to tear his throat open with her teeth.
“Lily. Not Lillian,” she says to Blake, proud of herself for how natural and even her voice sounds.
Blake’s smile slides wider across his face. “I knew Lillie Langtry, you know. She was much prettier than you.”
Alexander clears his throat, still giving Blake an impatient and murderous glare. Blake waves one bored gloved hand. “Yes, yes, all right. You can go and threaten Cora, if it’ll make you happy. You can take Timothy and Jay along for the trip, if they like. A chance for all of you to have a little holiday.”
Alexander nods, mollified. “I’ll make the flight arrangements. Jay, shall I book you a ticket?”
Lily glances at Jay. He looks surprised and touched, like Blake has done something thoughtful in including him. Lily suspects that Blake’s chief motivation in sending Jay along to wherever Alexander is headed is to cut one of Lily’s supports out from under her. Blake has already proved himself so very good at removing Lily’s friends from the picture.
She can’t bring herself to wipe the happy look off Jay’s face, though, so she stays quiet when he says, “Yeah, sounds like fun.”
“Lillian… sorry, Lily,” Blake corrects himself with a condescending smirk. “Would you care to join us upstairs?”
Her cold blood runs colder. She’d thought she was ready for this, but she’s not. She needs to get away. She needs to get away as fast as she can.
“I was just leaving, actually,” she says, still sounding far calmer than she feels. “Thanks for showing me the studio, Jay.”
She begins to walk past the vampires, back to the staircase down to the ground level and freedom.
“The vampire voice is a delicate precision instrument,” Blake tells her as she passes him, refusing to look in his direction. “It requires the finest technology to record its true richness. If you ever feel inclined to make more music, I suggest you do so here. We’re best equipped to bring out the best in you.”
“I doubt that,” she says icily, and his amused laughter follows her as she leaves.
~
It’s late now. Too late for most things. Lily walks past closed storefronts and listens to the hush of tires on wet roads. After walking aimlessly for almost an hour, she finds herself on the sidewalk in front of a little church, its stained-glass windows lit up from within and shining in warm hues out into the night.
During the day, those windows look lovely from the inside, glowing down on the faithful, shining with the brightness of the sun. But at night the shine is directed outwards, offering its light out to the world, comfort to those yet to cross the threshold into the warm cavern of pews and altar.
Lily steps inside and doesn’t burn or turn to ash or any of the other fates vampires used to fear from churches. She doesn’t know if that’s a sign that she isn’t evil after all, or a sign that God isn’t there anymore.
The stained glass windows look like night scenes from inside, the streetlight glow not enough to push the illumination through their pigments as brightly as the sun. One panel depicts St Francis of Assisi, preaching to the birds on the roadside. Lily likes St Francis, even though she always feels grimy and imperfect beside his serenity. Her favourite story about him, when she was little, was always the story of the hungry wolf. It had jaws slick with the blood of the people it had devoured, but St Francis wasn’t afraid, and approached it with love, and baptised it, and brought it into the nearby village so that the people could feed it and keep it from its bloodthirsty hunger, and thereby keep themselves safe.
Lily looks at the painted glass wings of the birds and remembers Will telling her, when she’d stumbled to the warehouse that nigh
t, bloodied and changed and pleading to be stopped from waking up, she’d told him that she’d bitten and killed a bird before coming home. “You kept saying ‘poor bird’,” Will had told her quietly, as she sat with her hood pulled up around her face, hiding from the world. “You were crying for it.”
Lily turns her face away from the image of St Francis, preaching to the birds in his night-dark glass image, and walks toward the front of the church. She lights a candle for Bette, and one for Will, and one for Jay, and one for herself, and then she bows her head. She doesn’t pray, but she wishes as hard as her heart can wish, and hopes that God understands her anyway.
WILL
Will and Lily had sex once.
Will was finally worn down by Lily’s bombastic adoration a few weeks after his seventeenth birthday. It was a Sunday morning, the two of them sleeping in as late as they could manage with Will’s stepdad running the lawn mower on the front lawn. They’d been at a show the night before and were both feeling the pleasant exhaustion of bruised limbs and tired eyes. As usual, Lily had kicked most of the covers to the floor while they slept, and so Will woke them both up with a surprised sneeze.
Lily’s hair was a crow-black mess around her head as she sat up, her t-shirt rucked up and revealing the smooth golden-brown of her stomach and the curled dark edges of the top of the thorny vine tattoo on her hip, peeking above the waistband of the boxer shorts she’d borrowed from Will to sleep in. Will kicked one of her ankles, burrowing down deeper into his pillow.
“Too early. Quit moving,” he grumbled. Lily prodded him in the soft spot just below his ribs, where the last of Will’s puppy fat clung tenaciously.
“I want pancakes.”
“It’s nice to want things,” he snapped back without malice. Outside, Will’s stepdad started singing ‘Mr. Sandman’, exuberantly and off-key.
“Oh god,” Will complained, putting the pillow over his head.
Lily poked him below the ribs again, more insistent this time. “You’re my dream, you know that right? My dream with a complexion like peaches and cream. Little more fruit and a little less dairy might be good for the spare tire here.” Another prod.
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