by Lola Gabriel
“Okay!” Terry said. “Message received. We can go back to making prison plans.”
2
Maddie
Really, Maddie never did that sort of thing! Yes, she flirted, she wasn’t a nun, but she didn’t flirt quite that obviously when she was quite this sober. Okay, not sober, but not past tipsy!
He wasn’t even her type. Tall and fit, yes, but he had a seriousness about him. He only looked about her age, but the grey streak in his jet-black hair was striking and maybe it was that which lent him an air of mystery. Or of power. God, she’d lost it. But it was probably the eyes that had got her, really. Ice blue, but not cold. Just intense. Seeking. And the way he had looked at her, he’d definitely been interested. Jenny said as much, and Allan, when she met them outside the pub.
“He’s gorge,” Allan half yelled at her, grabbing her arm. “Got those daddy vibes!”
Allan was about twelve (okay, he was nineteen) and in the exact same admin job that she was, so of course he wouldn’t think twice at calling a, what, twenty-nine, thirty-year-old a daddy. But Rex really did have an air of authority! She wasn’t crazy.
“What’s his accent?” Jenny asked. “Did he say? Did you get a number?” Already, Jenny was wobbling in her heels, and holding Allan for support. Allan didn’t seem to mind, or even really notice. He had his arm linked with hers, her hand on his.
“No,” Maddie said, regretting that she hadn’t. She really wasn’t used to the random flirtations thing. “And I didn’t ask where his accent’s from, that would be weird. I just… I knocked his cards over earlier.”
“Girl, he wants to knock your cards over!” Allan said, elbowing her roughly. Jenny let out a whoop.
“Let’s go in here!” called someone at the front of the pack of workmates. Allan joined Jenny in her whooping, and then called out, “Shots, shots, shots!”
It was 10 p.m. on a Thursday. Maddie wondered how many of her colleagues would be off work tomorrow. And how many would be in with no sleep. Not that it was her desire to judge. The telecoms billing industry would live to see another day no matter how slack the office was. It wasn’t exactly life and death.
The new bar was up a metal staircase. It was a big warehouse space, half empty because, of course, it was a Thursday. Everyone there seemed to be in groups from work just like they were. A few people were swaying gently or leaning hard on tables and walls. The get really drunk to deal with it method of surviving a work night out. Maybe Maddie should go all in too? This was her first week, she couldn’t exactly duck out early. Or, she could, but then she would forever be boring Maddie. No office gossip for boring Maddie, no cheeky lunchtime pints with the youngsters. Boring Maddie would also be bored.
“You want a shot, Maddie?” It was Allan, of course. Maddie sighed, but not too loudly.
“Go on, then, Allan, but no sambuca and nothing sweet. Proper liquor only!”
“Oooo, mad Maddie! Knew I liked you when you started chatting up that hottie in the King’s, and now I’m sure!”
Allan disappeared to the bar and came back with a tray of tequilas, lime, and salt.
“Get it down!” he squealed as he placed the tray on a table and everyone reached over for their shot. Maddie was going to regret this in the morning, that was for sure.
Shots, inevitably, became dancing. And more shots. And then everyone left in the bar seemed so damn happy. That feeling, the one where you look around and suddenly you think, What the fuck am I doing here and who are these people? The one that happens when you have cunningly disappeared the last three times “SHOTS!” has been shouted, and shots have been had… well, that came over Maddie. She was done. Deflated. Sobering up. Surrounded by disaffected marrieds and wild youngsters and, of course, she was somewhere in between herself. She stayed for one more dance—it was nearly 11 p.m. and apparently that meant it was time for the old boy band numbers. Smart. Worked for the old marrieds reliving their youth on this beautiful Thursday night and the fun young crowd who liked it retro. One more dance, and then halfway through, she slipped quietly out. The trick of the in-between age! No one noticed. She grabbed her jacket off the back of a chair, and then she was down the clanging metal stairs to the double doors and the tired-looking bouncer and…freedom.
Maddie was weirdly proud of herself for going out with her new workmates, and also for not being boring, and also for not getting wasted, and also, actually, for that ridiculous level of flirting she had managed with grey streak earlier. What was his name? Began with an R... Rex! An unusual name. Like, a pet’s name? Oh well, he wore it well.
It was dark in the little, ex-industrial alleys around the bar, by the river. It must have been portside at some point, years ago, Maddie imagined. She grew up by the sea. She missed the sea. Missed water. They hadn’t had a lot of money, but they’d lived in what was essentially an overgrown village with a high street and a couple of office blocks stuffed with telecoms workers. Funny that she had ended up back in telecoms.
Ugh. Yes, ugh, but she did want to see water, even if it was stinking city water. She was halfway to the tube station when she decided to take a detour to the river front. She didn’t know the tide here; she lived a few miles into the eastern edge of London, why would she know the tides? But if she was lucky, the tide would be low and the weird, sticky, black beach of the Thames would be exposed. She could go down there and kick some seaweed before she traveled home and went to bed way too late and woke up again and did tomorrow. Did tomorrow just like bloody today (but hopefully fewer shots). And then maybe, next week, she’d casually come back to the King’s Arms for a drink. And maybe tall, dark Rex would be there with the grey streak in his hair and those eyes…
She could hear the river, the tide coming in, but it was dark and the streetlights were few and far between. There was one more alley between Maddie and the water, the weird dark beach of the Thames, but then she heard something that wasn’t the water and wasn’t revelers. Footsteps? Footsteps moving too quickly. Someone running on cobbles. Big industrial bins towered in front of her, and behind them a patch of light, and her heart was beating in her mouth as her own steps sped up and she headed for the relative safety of that golden pool of light. She passed the bins, and then a couple more steps. She slowed a little to look behind her, and then she shrieked. She let out a scream like she had never heard before, from herself or anyone else! A high-pitched yell of real terror. It was too late, though. The thing was upon her, its pale eyes glittering in the light that made no difference after all, its teeth bared, face stretched into an expression of pure hate. It smelled rotten. It smelled salted and fetid and dirty. Her back hit the cobblestones hard. I’ll have weird bruises, she thought. And then it was at her neck, and her eyes were swimming with tears, blinded by the light above her… until it faded. Until everything was dark, and then everything was gone.
3
Rex
He didn’t exactly tumble out of the pub, but he wasn’t completely sober either. Rex lived close enough to walk, though the walk would be long enough to be sobering and brisk. The temperature was dropping, and his “breath” was visible in front of his face. He decided on the back way home—the main roads wouldn’t be busy-busy on a Thursday night, but humans took any opportunity for revelry. And there were always beggars. Humans weren’t very good at looking after one another, either. Rex laughed at himself for the thought about revelry—why he had really organized a “meeting” with Terry. Piss up, that’s why. A meeting at his local. Sometimes, Rex thought he should be nicer, cultivate more friends. He had a few, scattered around the world now, but most of them had drifted toward invisibility or died over the years. It was hard to kill a vamp, but not impossible.
He had staff—a cleaner, a driver. He had colleagues—the vampire council, the council of immortals, and he had whisperers. Acquaintances like Terry who told him things, drank with him, knew him well enough for it to almost feel like friendship. But when was the last time he had let someone in? Bloody hell, maybe he w
as drunk after all. Bloody hell… a uniquely British phrase, and something that had drawn him to this country many, many, many years ago. Until battles and marriages had led him here, to being the vampire king. The vampire bloody king.
Rex smelled blood. Human blood. The tang snapped him into the present, and he followed the scent around a corner, down an alley narrower than the one he was in, and toward the river. It was human blood. His teeth tingled with want for it, his mouth filled with saliva. But human blood was a bad sign, he reminded himself, here and now. The world was still bad, yes, but it was not bloody like it had once been. Rex passed a clump of bins. Some of the boxes piled by them had been overturned, maybe in some kind of a fight. He felt his fingernails digging into the flesh of his palms. His foot was on something sticky. Blood. Running between the cobbles. Too much blood for its rightful owner to be okay, he thought. And then he saw her.
Maddie’s eyes were closed and she was pale. Her hair was spread out around her head, and her arms were splayed. All her clothes were on, and she looked almost peaceful, like she was napping, if you didn’t look below her face. The damage was all to the neck.
Rex looked left and right, listened with everything he could, and heard nothing. He was still drawn to the human, even now that she was gone. There was something about her, something that made him want to know more. Made him want to taste her skin, not just her blood. Know her. He knelt beside her to look more closely at the wound on her neck. It was rough, ripped, but there was no doubt. Fangs. This was the work of vampires—perhaps a vampire had been dragged off mid-feed? Or had been so hungry it had pulled away more flesh than it needed to? Either way, it wasn’t a clean kill. And from the amount of blood around the body, it hadn’t been a satisfying feed either, which meant whoever did it might want to feed again.
This was going to be messy. The council of immortals wouldn’t be happy, and Rex would get the shit for it. Unless he just… he could hide the body, and then he could find out who was responsible? Rex put a hand out, as if to test Maddie’s body, its weight, the moral weight this act would carry.
It was warm. Not as warm as it should be, but not as cold as the air around them.
Shit. He felt at her wrist for a pulse. Her blood was still liquid, still trickling, of course she was alive! He was an idiot. The pulse was thready, but it was there. This made everything much more complicated. Did he have time to get her to a hospital? Would she make it? Judging by the blood pooling deep enough it almost seemed to be lapping at his shoes, plus whatever her attacker had swallowed, no way.
So there were two options.
One of the options was easier, sure, but it was also wrong.
The other? Grey area. And he might get a description of the attacker.
Besides, Rex figured, he hadn’t turned anyone in centuries, he might fuck it up, and then the question would be answered for him!
Rex was stiff from effort by the time he lifted his fangs from her throat. The cut on his own wrist hurt, which was an unusual sensation for a vampire, really, but normal after sharing your own immortal blood, he thought. If he remembered correctly.
If the attempt at turning her had worked, Rex figured he had a few hours before she woke up. His only option now was to take her back to his place, which, he realized, might be an issue if she died. Better assume that wouldn’t happen, then. The blood had stopped leaking from her, and the wound seemed to be closing, but that could also just be from prolonged exposure to his spit. Whether or not she was going to li—well, unlive?—either way, a vampire’s spit obviously healed flesh.
Rex picked Maddie up carefully and held her like a baby or a bride, laid out in his arms, the crook of an elbow supporting her tousled head and its waves of brunette hair. It was hard to be sure in the darkness, even with his vision, but it looked as though her eyes might be beginning to move a little beneath their pale, closed lids. Her eyelashes were long and caught the rays of the outside light behind them as he walked away with her. He hoped he wouldn’t see anyone on the way back to his place, but if he did, he would say something about her being drunk. Maybe he’d use a little mind control to keep the human’s eyes from the blood that was still gumming up the cobblestones where she had been lying if he had to. It was always exhausting, though. Unless the human was drunk too…and they would be, wouldn’t they? Drunk or in a hurry to get somewhere. Humans were always in such a damn hurry these days. It got bad when they all started carrying those little clocks, and now the phones had their attention all the time! Like carrying around… Well, there was no comparison, was there? The things were basically bloody magic. Ridiculous to call them phones at all; phones, when they had been invented, were pretty amazing, but they were all crackly and there were wires that connected them, but now it was all just in the air. And they were full-on entertainment palaces, basically, in everyone’s pocket. If Rex had possessed a phone during his human childhood in the Eastern Mountains, he might never have wandered off, for one thing! Might never have made the circle of friends that ended up being more than that, ended up—
Rex had been so deep in his own thoughts that he had nearly sleepwalked to his door. He assumed he hadn’t passed any humans on the twenty-odd-minute walk. He was tired from trying to change Maddie. She was still definitely not dead in his arms, but it was hard to tell what sort of not dead. Rex had to shift Maddie’s weight to get into his pocket and retrieve his keys, then he pushed his fob against the key pad and a green light and a beep told him he could push the door with his back and get into his concrete foyer and then the lift. There was a mirror opposite the lift entrance, as one of its walls, which Rex found very funny. He had taken this whole building over, of course, so no humans ever came in, but the sight of just his clothes, standing up and filled out, always tickled him as he came home. Maddie, he was interested to note, was still reflected. But she seemed faint, out of focus. Perhaps, or perhaps he was just exhausted and his eyes were swimming, and he would have a corpse to get rid of in the morning.
Rex had to insert a key to get up to his floor, the top floor of the building. It was one of a group of three tower blocks, and the other two were full of thousands of humans. This one? Just his, and a couple of staff on the lower floors. He liked the concrete, the grey. It reminded him of the castles and keeps of his youth, and the mountains of the country he had grown up in.
Up in his flat, Rex lay Maddie down on the sofa in the big, open-plan living room/kitchen. Then he thought for a moment. Where would blankets be? If she woke up, she would want blankets. He didn’t want her to be cold. Was that because he didn’t want her to freak out, or because he cared about her? How could he? He’d just met her. And she was a human. Or, she had been… Still, he should get her blankets. Because of the potential freaking out.
When Rex leaned over Maddie to tuck her in, he could hear her breath rattling in and out of her. It was a death rattle, but would she snap back? Outside, the city glittered. If she was going to wake up, she wouldn’t want too much sun. Especially just after her transition, the sun would scald her, nearly blind her. Rex felt down the back of the couch and dragged out a small remote. He hit a button, and dark blinds whirred down over the windows.
There. Good host. Rex wandered over to the fridge and grabbed a hanging bag of blood. He would eat it in bed. He needed bed; turning the girl had been difficult. It really had been a long time since he had last attempted to turn anyone. There were so many rules about it now. Would there be forms to fill in if she made it? Again, he asked himself why he had bothered. And again, he felt the pull of her. The pull of her even though she was unconscious, unmoving on his sofa.
4
Maddie
When Maddie opened her eyes, it was still dark.
Or was it? The room was dark, but why was she so uncomfortable? This level of “where the hell am I” on waking usually came with a raging sore head, a dry, cotton-wool-filled mouth, a film of sweat. And that horrible cloak of embarrassment that a hangover brings. But not today. Maybe she
was just tired still. Maybe if she just went to sleep, she would know what the hell was going on when she woke again. And still feel this good, too.
With sleeping as the new plan, Maddie tried to turn over and find her duvet, maybe a cool bit of the bed, but somehow she found herself on the floor.
And it wasn’t her floor. What the hell? Thinking harder, she remembered being out with work mates. New work mates. God, she had better not have messed anything up, done anything dumb. She had done karaoke and flirted openly, but the new work folks were fun enough. Maybe too fun? She remembered shots, and then…ugh. Maddie, what did you do this time? She was on a rug, and that was…a sofa. Okay, she’d slept on a sofa, so a lamp must be nearby. After a bit of crawling about, Maddie found a corner table and then a cord and then…light! Let there be light!
Wherever she was, it was fancy as hell. Her bag was over in the corner by the door, and she walked over to it. She was wearing her clothes from last night, of course, but at least they were all still on. And somehow, she wasn’t hungover. In fact, she felt great. Full of energy, and kind of fizzy. A fantastic mood. Like she wanted to dance, or run, even. Her phone was dead. Huh. There had to be someone else here. Someone had let her into this big open-plan palace of a room, with the clean silver kitchen. Actually, she was starving. Maddie padded toward the big fridge, but stopped herself before she actually opened it. She should at least see who was home. Like, peek her head into the other room.
“Shit!”
She hadn’t meant to swear so loudly, but she hadn’t expected Rex from the pub either. He’d fallen asleep with his bedside lamp on, splayed across the bed in just his underwear. When she shouted, his eyes opened. They were just as blue as she remembered. His stubble had grown overnight, it was dark and masculine and— Why did she feel like she could smell him, masculine and musky and sleepy?
