Diary of an Alligator Queen

by Winter Reid

  My situation had seemed so cut-and-dried in the daytime. So obvious. There were vampires in the world hunting humans. Once I had knowledge of them, I had a duty to protect my kind. Except that my kind wasn’t strictly human anymore and what we’d done felt like… entrapment, I suppose. Even though he would have killed her if we hadn’t stopped him. I shook my head.

  My vampire looked at me but said nothing.

  The worrying was pointless in at least one respect—other vampires would hunt me anyway. With vigor.

  Equally troubling was the nagging issue of my own future. What do you call someone who spends months killing a certain brand of beings on principle and then becomes one? Hypocrite is one word. Murderer is another. I started to get the sense that I was going to have to do something rather drastic and permanent to fix my karma, and the idea made me cringe.

  My vampire caught my hand and stopped, staring up at the diner in front of us, its pink and blue neon pinstriping glowing in the night.

  “When did you eat last?” he asked.

  “This afternoon,” I lied.

  He glanced at me, sidelong. “What did you eat last?”

  I swallowed. “A fried chicken dinner. Mashed potatoes with gravy and cornbread.”

  He snorted and pulled me up the steps through the door. We took a booth by the window, the red vinyl seat sighing beneath my weight. The lights were low except over the counter which suited me just fine.

  Our waitress came over, sliding two laminated menus across the scarred tabletop. She was skin and bones, and the tight, wiry muscle that comes from years of heaving trays and dishes. Her hair was a combination of blonde and gray, twisted back in a knot, a pencil jammed over her ear.

  “Something to drink?” she asked, steely gray eyes locked on the clock over the cash register.

  I looked at my vampire. He shrugged.

  “Um… two coffees,” I answered.

  Nodding, she walked away.

  “You’re not drinking enough,” he cautioned once she was out of range.

  I frowned. “How do you know that?”

  “No one does at first,” he said. “You don’t eat enough, either.”

  “I can’t eat!” I said a little louder than I meant too. The waitress was back and she gave me a funny look as she set down our cups.

  “You ready to order?” she asked, eyeing me suspiciously.

  “Can I get another minute?” I asked and smiled at her.

  She wasn’t impressed.

  “Holler when you’re ready.” Sauntering back toward the counter, she leaned against it, talking with two older men on stools. Truckers probably; their foam-mesh ball caps hideous and orange.

  “I can’t eat,” I snapped in a harsh whisper. “I try all the time but I just end up puking my guts out. The most I can do is Ensure, and even then I get a wicked stomach ache.”

  “Ensure what?” he asked, puzzled.

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s a vitamin drink.”

  He didn’t look enlightened.

  I sighed. “It’s like drinking a whole meal instead of eating it.”

  If you’ve never had a vampire give you a look of total disgust, you’re missing out.

  “Oh, like you don’t drink your meals every day! Besides, it tastes like chocolate.”

  “If it’s a whole meal at once it must be very hard for your body to digest. It might be better to try something simple. Like honey water.”

  We were in possibly the greasiest dive in town, bacon fat and lard so thick on the walls you could use it for hair wax.

  “Sweetheart,” I said, “I don’t think honey water’s on the menu.”

  He pushed a menu in my direction. “Something else then.”

  I waved the waitress over and she slid the pencil out of her hair, tapping her pad with the pointed end. “What’ll it be?” she asked.

  “Can I get an order of cinnamon toast?” I asked.

  She raised an eyebrow at me. “That it?”

  I nodded. He kicked me under the table.

  “How ‘bout you, Big Spender?” she asked without actually looking at him.

  There was nothing about him that screamed supernatural. No faint glow or deathly shade of white. Don’t get me wrong, he was as pale as anyone would be if they never went into the sun, but he didn’t look unhealthy. Quite the opposite actually.

  I wasn’t expecting him to actually order anything, but I figured he’d at least tell her he wasn’t hungry. He didn’t, and we sat in awkward silence until I realized his lips were shut tight over his fangs.

  “He’ll have the steak and eggs, over easy,” I told her. “The pancakes too, and a side of bacon. Lots of butter.”

  She glanced at him. “You want toast or biscuits with that?”

  “Biscuits,” I answered for him. “With sausage gravy.”

  “Anything else?” she asked him directly. He shook his head slowly, his eyes boring holes into my face.

  “That,” he said, once she had moved away, “was excessive.”

  I grinned. “We wouldn’t want to look suspicious.”

  He growled, low enough it was inaudible under the dishwasher. A pack of college kids stumbled in drunk and shouting at each other. I leaned over the table to talk to my vampire as they settled into booths.

  “Can I ask you something?” I whispered.

  He nodded.

  “You said they,” I stressed the word, hoping he would know who I meant, “stay together until a young one is old enough to hunt on their own.”

  “It’s a responsibility to create one. The young need a parent figure to guide them. Think of what would happen if they were allowed to roam free.”

  “Is that why you’re helping me?”

  “It’s certainly a bonus,” he confessed. “I’ll have less to teach you later when you…”

  “Go nuts?” I offered.

  “Become less rational,” he corrected.

  “Does it bother you? What we did tonight?”

  He leaned forward. “Yes.”

  “Because he was one of yours?”

  “One of ours. But no that’s not the reason.”

  “That’s not the reason but you don’t want to tell me what is?”

  “I don’t. Not yet.”

  Blue light from the neon sign on the window colored the side of his face, washing over his hand where it rested on the table. I liked that he didn’t fidget. No tapping toes or restless fingers, just a calm stillness that radiated from the center of his being.

  “Why else?”

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “Why else are you helping me?” I clarified.

  A gentle smile played around his mouth.

  “You are…” he trailed off.

  “Witty?” I offered. “Enchanting? Intoxicating?”

  “Very alive—”

  The waitress interrupted him, returning with our tray. She slid our plates on the table one after the other. My toast looked a little lonely all by itself. She plunked down a bottle of ketchup and hurried off to see to her newer guests.

  “—and somewhat frustrating,” he conceded, looking down at his smorgasbord.

  I nibbled at my toast, and he was right—it wasn’t so bad. I eyed his pancakes. He pushed them toward me. I covered them in syrup, took a few bites, and let them settle. I took a few more bites. They were heavenly, melting in my mouth; all butter and sweetness. Before I knew it, they were gone.

  “I don’t understand,” I said.

  “What don’t you understand?”

  “If they never stay together, how was it that you had a lover?”

  “I said it wasn’t common, not that it doesn’t happen.”

  “Don’t you get lonely? I would get lonely.”

  He smiled. “From time to time.”

  “And you have no political organization? No Council of Elders or anything?”

  “There may be clusters of such groups, but as far as an overarching authority? No, not to my knowledge.”


  “No code of conduct?”

  “Just what is passed to us by our makers.”

  “And you don’t remember your maker?”

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t that frustrate you?”

  “Why should it?”

  “Everyone wants to know where they come from?”

  He frowned. “I believe there was a time when I was more concerned with those sorts of things.”

  “But not now?”

  “No.”

  “What are you concerned with now?”

  Reaching across the table, he stroked the back of my hand with his thumb. “You.”

  “Ha,” I said, giving him the stink eye, “and in another thousand years you’ll be sitting here with a new girl telling her you think you sat in the same booth with a lover years ago but you can’t remember who.”

  He grinned, covering his mouth with his hand when the waitress came back with fresh coffee.

  “Something wrong with the food?” she asked, a little hostile as she took in his untouched meal.

  “It’s perfect,” I told her. “He just overestimated.”

  She made a scoffing noise in her throat.

  “How about the check?” I asked. She nodded and walked away. “And a box,” I yelled after her.

  I blanched a little when the bill came. “Do you have any money on you?” I asked.

  He frowned. “Currency is not something I generally keep.”

  “Why not?” I asked, laying thirty dollars on the table.

  “Well,” he said, leaning closer, “I can’t earn it.”

  “A moral vampire,” I whispered, my lips curved up. “Where did you get your clothes?”

  “There was a large container full of bags. It was similar to the ones I see used for refuse.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said. “And was this container red?”

  “It was,” he answered.

  I stretched even closer, so that our faces were nearly touching. “You stole from the Salvation Army, you bad boy.”

  “Your breath smells different,” he said, watching my mouth again.

  “It’s the syrup,” I whispered.

  He put his hands on my cheeks and pressed his lips against mine, running his tongue between them. “You taste different, too.”

  “Butter and syrup.” I breathed.

  He kissed me again, harder, and I opened for him without intending to. His teeth scraped against my lip, and it was all I could do not to jump into his lap. I sighed, settling into it just as the waitress slapped my change down next to us. He pulled away abruptly to the hoots and cheers of the boys who’d come in after us. I felt light-headed, dizzy, and realized I was practically lying across the table.

  “I’ll take you home,” he said, low and rough.

  “Okay,” I breathed.

  He didn’t say another word until we arrived at my door, reaching for my keys again. I handed them over, following him up the stairs without argument. When we got to my apartment he opened that too, making a quick survey of the rooms before he came back to me in the foyer.

  “I’ll come back for you after dark,” he said, and started for the stairs.

  “Wait.” I rushed after him.

  He stopped, turning to look at me.

  “You don’t have to go,” I heard myself say quietly. I took a breath. Be a lady. “You could stay in the basement today. No one ever goes down there.”

  “I don’t think so,” he said, smiling. “You might take a stake to me while I sleep.”

  “No,” I promised. “When I’m ready for that, you’ll see it coming.”

  He grinned a little wider. “You can’t kill me.”

  “Keep telling yourself that,” I said and closed the door.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The Drinking Dream

  His movement wakes me and the light has changed once more. It’s dawn or sunset, I’m not sure which. He pulls my head down to the side, and I cry out as my neck opens up again. Not the entire wound this time; only part of it. He licks at the opening and it hurts a little less. Then he takes his teeth to it and it hurts a lot more. My body goes stiff and I push against him with everything I’ve got, which isn’t much at this point. After a minute, I realize that I can’t feel my legs, or my arms for that matter. My head is getting fuzzy and I can’t tell if I’m too hot or too cold. I sigh, and it seems like too much work to breathe in again.

  His fingers push hard against the joints of my jaw, forcing my mouth open so he can press his skin against my lips. It’s wet, and I know what the wetness is. I know I don’t want it. I try to close my mouth but he won’t let me. Prying my eyes open, I can just barely see the outlines of his face in the darkness, like charcoal on black paper.

  I can taste his heat, the salt and copper that pours from his wrist. It floods my mouth, running out at the corners but I don’t swallow. Finally, he takes his wrist away and pushes my chin closed, tilting my head back so that the blood pools at the top of my throat. I hold it there, breathing hard through my nose. He takes his other hand and strokes the front of my neck, trying to force the reflex. I start crying again, and some of the blood leaks out from between my teeth, my lips, and rolls down to coat his fingers.

  He growls and pulls me up away from the wall of the hole, slamming me right back into it, and I swallow without meaning to. I cry out loud then; not because it hurt, but because of what I’ve done.

  I hear a noise, soft and gentle, and I realize that it’s him and that the noise is meant to soothe me. He’s stroking me again, running his fingers over places he hurt. He presses his forehead into mine and it’s an apology. We stay that way for a moment or two, breathing the same air, and his hand comes up to my jaw again, squeezing it open.

  Chapter Twenty

  I woke up at two-thirty in the afternoon, pissed and restless thanks to the dream.

  For a while I just paced around in my apartment, picking things up and putting them down again, finally plopping down onto the couch with the TV remote and a loaf of generic white bread. I pulled the crust off the slices and made little balls with the middles like I used to when I was young.

  Flipping through the channels, I found an older movie to watch, something mindless and forgettable. And I waited, tracking the changing light as it moved through my windows. Watching it slant, turn pink, and eventually disappear.

  I let him knock twice before I answered. He looked me up and down.

  “You’re not wearing that outside,” he said. “It’ll draw too much human attention.”

  Scowling, I looked down at my torso. I’d been too distracted to change out of my pajamas.

  “I don’t want to go outside with you,” I told him. “And even if I did, you wouldn’t get a vote in what I wore.”

  He frowned at me and started toward my bedroom. By the time I got there he was pawing carefully through the clothes in my dresser. I watched him, the way he moved so very deliberately, so very controlled—a far cry from the monster I’d seen while I slept.

  “Why were you hungry?”

  He paused, confused, and looked at me. “What?”

  “You said you didn’t mean to turn me but you were so hungry you…” I couldn’t finish but I walked closer to him. “Why?”

  How much he didn’t want to talk about this was all over his face.

  “I was fasting,” he said at last. “I had been for months.”

  I stared at him, open-mouthed. And then I laughed. “Like for Lent?”

  “No, I was committing suicide,” he said.

  My laughter faded and I looked at him.

  “I’d been living there,” he continued, “back in the caves in the bluff. Feeding sometimes off the humans who came into the park at night—the people that aren’t missed. More often I’d take the geese… cottonmouths, and deer.”

  He stood upright so he was looking down at me and reached out to touch the pulse at my neck.

  “All humans have their own smell. I knew yours because you passed me so of
ten,” he said. “And you knew I was there. Most humans were oblivious, but you… I would close my eyes and hear your heartbeat quicken, your feet moving faster on the ground. At some point I stopped simply being aware of you and came to listen for you instead.”

  “No,” I whispered.

  “Ridiculous,” he agreed, “to think I had some knowledge of you by these things, but… you asked if I ever get lonely. I do. And by then I had gone far too long without the comfort of another voice.”

  He shook his head.

  “I always woke when you passed, even at noon. I wanted you. Hated you. Envied you your freedom… I loved you. The sound of your breath and blood pumping. You look like I’d imagined you would,” he added as an afterthought.

  I cleared my throat. “There were a lot of places on those trails that made me nervous,” I lied. I knew exactly the place he meant. Deep in the park the land rose to one side about ten feet from the path. The bluff wasn’t high, only thirty feet, low enough to be well-covered with brush. I knew there were caves along the face of it. I’d always felt hunted when I passed them. I remembered wondering if something bad had happened there, something so violent and terrible that it left a mark, like a thumbprint on glass. If he caught my lie, it didn’t bother him.

  “You fell there once. Do you remember?”

  I nodded.

  “I wanted to see you so I hid in the shadows behind a tree just off the path and waited. You came through the bend with the man who was here. He was talking, and you were too, until you got closer. You looked at me. Right at me. And then you fell.”

  “I remember,” I whispered. “I thought I’d imagined you.”

  “There was blood everywhere. On your hands, your knee… all over the ground.”

  “I have a scar.”

  “You were crying and couldn’t walk. The man… he had to carry you out.”

  “He laughed all the way to the car,” I said distractedly.

  “I felt terrible that I had hurt you like that. Eventually I recognized that it had been a very long time since I’d thought of a human as anything other than food, since I’d considered humans at all. And it occurred to me that I didn’t want to kill you even though the drive was there, and that maybe I didn’t want to kill anything else either. That perhaps it was time to stop altogether.”