by eden Hudson
“Still,” I say. “It’s gross.”
She lights up. “Nobody’s forcing you to stay.”
I feel myself smile.
We go back to watching the show. I was lying when I said smoking was gross. That’s something I picked up from Sissy and Ryder, a hold-over from elementary school. I like the way cigarettes smell. Like burning paper with a tang of something else.
Then I take a drink of my coffee and taste the smoke.
“Tastes like cigarettes and ass,” I say.
Tiffani doesn’t look my way, but she half-smiles. Not quite enough to show her fangs.
“Aaron, my ex-husband, used to smoke.” She takes a deep breath and lets it out. “I wouldn’t let him do it in the house. Didn’t want the smell in my clothes.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I see Tiffani tap the filter on her thumb. One tiny curl of ash falls off.
“He died yesterday,” she says. Her expression hasn’t changed.
I adjust the handle of my cup again. “Was it sad? For you, I mean. Him dying.”
“It shouldn’t have been,” she says. “Hadn’t talked to him in more than fifty years.”
The episode keeps playing. Tiffani finishes her cigarette and puts it out in her palm.
When I realize I’m staring, I make myself look at the show again. I’ve been stabbed and shot and beat the hell out of before. I even got Tased once, the day before Ryder and I dropped out of high school. But I can’t remember ever having been burned. I wonder what it feels like. I wonder if she’s doing it because it hurts or because of the heat.
Tiffani wraps her arms around her stomach like she’s trying to hold in the warmth.
Does she know she’s been leaning closer and closer to me this whole time or do vamps not notice that sort of thing?
“You could lean against me if you wanted,” I say.
She looks at me like I’m crazy.
“If you’re cold.” I point at the way her upper body’s angled toward me.
“Hell,” she says.
But she scoots over and presses her arm against mine.
Cold isn’t quite the right word to describe what she feels like. Even through our long sleeves, her skin sucks the heat out of mine, but I don’t complain or pull away. I can’t remember the last time someone touched me. I didn’t even realize how badly I missed it. Not in a sexual way—can’t miss something you’ll probably never have—just basic human contact.
Maybe my brain forgot how to want things. Maybe I’m even more screwed up than I am crazy.
When the episode ends, Tiffani slides out of the booth. “I need to get ready to open.”
That’s my cue. Get lost before someone sees my vehicle sitting out front and decides they would rather starve to death than eat in the same bakery as Colt Whitney.
I take my plate and cup to the order window, reach through and set them in the slop sink, then go grab my coat. Head for the door.
“Colt.”
I turn around. I think that’s the first time I’ve ever heard her say my name. Might be the first time anyone’s said it since I kicked Tough out. When you don’t have anyone to talk to, it gets kind of hard to keep track.
“Thanks. For…” She gestures at the booth with her cigarette pack.
My heart’s pounding and my face is hot. It feels like I’m about to do something stupid. But maybe she doesn’t have anyone else to talk to, either. Why else would she have told me about her ex dying and being upset?
“You’re welcome. Tiffani.”
Tiffani
On the shore, my body returned and my wounds healed. Not the painful crawling of vamp healing, just an instant restoration.
I stood up, brushed a few pieces of broken glass from my shirt, and patted my pockets for my cigarettes. Empty. Colt knew I smoked, but hadn’t considered the pack and the lighter I would need to do it.
Far away, almost on the horizon line, I could see Mikal. She stood beautiful and terrifying with her wings outstretched, towering over an ugly, hunched creature cringing at her feet. Even at this distance, the super-smeller picked up the reek of human waste, rotting garbage, and something like blood poisoning.
So that was where I was headed.
Need a cigarette, I thought. I imagined I had a lit one between my fingers.
Colt didn’t know how smoke tasted except for second-hand, but I’d brought enough of my own consciousness with me to recreate the flavor. I figured I deserved to waste a little of my concentration on the luxury. Especially after all that glass. I took a long drag and let the smoke curl in my lungs.
It didn’t mask the smell coming from the creature, but it was familiar, and the cigarette gave me something to focus on besides what it meant that Mikal was here.
You can’t go over there, a voice said.
Ryder had appeared. Spit bottle in one hand, the other hand hooked on his back pocket.
I thought you were supposed to be helping him, I said.
He don’t want you here, Ryder said. This is me helping.
I took another drag off my cigarette and sized him up. He was translucent in places. As I watched, he flickered in and out of existence.
What do I have to do? I asked. Fight you?
Ryder spit a stream of tobacco juice into the bottle and scraped his lip on the rim. Be a damn short fight, sweetheart. No, I’m just going to warn you. Take a fucking hint already. Leave.
I took a step toward Mikal and the creature.
Don’t! Ryder yelled. But he didn’t make any moves to stop me.
Another step. No glass or razor wire.
I exhaled and started walking.
An explosion from under my shoe tore my leg off at the hip.
Colt
“What do you think?” Tiff asks, nodding at the lobster tail pastry I’m eating.
“Tastes different,” I say. “Last time you made these they were good, but… This time they’re amazing. What’d you change?”
Tiff plops into the booth seat beside me. “Cinnamon in the cream.”
“Real cinnamon sticks, real bourbon vanilla extract.” I’ve heard that lecture a million times now. “You should make them this way every time.”
She gives me a wry smile. “You like anything with cinnamon.”
Not cinnamon schnapps. But I don’t say that out loud. Drinking isn’t something Tiff and I talk about. Food, yes. Coffee, yes. Whether Tough’s okay, how business is going, Mulder’s porn collection—all yes. Not drinking. Not training. Not planning out what I’m going to do with every single second that I’m not in the bakery and sticking to the plan because crazy people don’t follow schedules.
“You know,” Tiff says, looking at me sideways like she can tell I wandered off for a minute there. “Some people are allergic to cinnamon.”
“That’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”
She smiles and scoots over to lean against me. “Start my damn programs.”
I tap her computer screen, bring up the player, and find the episode we’re on. It’s hard to believe we’re just halfway through Season 5. But lately we’ve been talking more and watching less.
Once it’s playing, I sit back and put my arm around Tiff so she’ll get some heat on her left side, too. She squirms around until she’s comfortable. I almost miss the tagline because I’m paying attention to her. The way she feels, the way she smells—like cigarettes and coffee and cinnamon and hot peppers. I love that smell. It turns me on and relaxes me all at the same time.
I get settled and look up at the screen. The tagline is just starting to fade. I lunge forward and hit pause.
“What are you doing?” Tiffani says.
“Resist or Serve,” I read, pointing at the screen.
“Yeah?”
It’s like my whole life condensed into three words. Even bigger. It’s like everything in history condensed into three words.
“Colt?”
Three words. Who ever thought I’d be okay with three words—thirteen
letters—two of the worst numbers out there? But they keep running through my head—resist or serve resist or serve resist or serve—and it’s like my OCD can’t even compete with their efficiency. Even after I turn the episode back on and Tiff stops looking at me with that little crease between her eyebrows, they’re still there.
Resist or Serve.
*****
When I walk into the tattoo parlor later on that evening, Lonely drops the flash he’s working on and claps his hands.
“The other shoulder cap,” he says, pointing.
“Not today,” I say. “I’ve got something better.”
He grins his eerie crow grin and cocks his head at me. “There’s nothing better than a balanced spirit, white knight.”
But he’s wrong. When everything in the world makes sense in just a few words, when all the crazy shit and death and fighting and loss and sacrifice can be focused into one sentence, one phrase you can hang onto, that’s better than anything.
*****
The chest piece takes Lonely about forty-five minutes to outline and another two hours to shade. At one point, the tattoo iron shakes my ribcage so bad that I start to see black at the edges of my vision. Lonely calls for a break just before I pass out. He stretches the cramps out of his hand while I lean forward with my head between my knees and breathe. Then we start up again.
By the time he’s done, I know I won’t be able to wait all night to show Tiff. I pay Lonely, then head straight to the cemetery.
It’s misting out and kind of foggy, but I keep the Explorer floored. About halfway there it occurs to me that I haven’t had a drink since last night. But the tattoo-high, that invincible feeling, is buzzing in my head. The black noise has stayed tamped down all day. I’ve barely had to fight it. I haven’t seen anything I shouldn’t. I don’t feel crazy. I don’t feel anything but excited. All I want is to show Tiffani. I know she’ll get it. I know she’ll understand when she sees it. She can’t look at any of my other tattoos because they’re Bible verses and they hurt her, but this one she’ll get.
When I get to the cemetery, I park on the highway, then jump out.
Fog has collected around the headstones. I hear a feminine giggle somewhere off to the west side of the cemetery, but I know it’s not Tiffani. Tiffani never giggles. When she laughs, the sound comes from down in her chest. And it always sounds surprised, like she wasn’t expecting to hear anything funny.
Footsteps in the grass to my right.
“Colt?” Tiffani comes out of the mist. “What are you doing here?”
My heart skips a couple beats, then sprints to make up for it. I try to hold back the stupid grin, but I can’t.
“I wanted to show you my new ink.” I pull my shirt off over my head, then peel back the plastic with my free hand. The skin around the tattoo is still tender and hot, but the cool, wet fall air feels good on it.
Tiffani just stands there, staring. Long enough that the rational side of my brain finally catches up.
This is insane. Normal people don’t track each other down in cemeteries in the middle of the night. They go home and wait until morning to tell their only friends about their new tattoo. This is something a crazy, lonely person would do.
I can feel the blood flooding my face, turning my cheeks Whitney-red.
What the hell was I thinking?
I wasn’t. That’s the problem. I just did it. I didn’t have a plan or a backup, I didn’t consider any possible outcomes. Now I’m here and I can’t just throw my shirt back on and say, “Just kidding. See ya,” and run away. I’m so fucking stupid.
One hand has a death-grip on my shirt, the other is ticking off fingers. Except this time, instead of numbers, I’m counting syllables—resist or serve, resist or serve…
Without any warning, Tiffani closes the distance between us. Vamp speed. From twenty feet away to less than a foot in the time it takes me to flinch. Time, the world, everything stops. She reaches out. Her fingers are so cold that they burn as she traces the tender red skin around the ink. Goose bumps break out all over my chest.
My voice is hoarse when I ask her, “What do you think?”
“I’m not that into tattoos,” she says. “Sort of old-fashioned that way.”
But she doesn’t stop tracing the letters or even look up at me.
“You like it,” I say.
Tiff smiles.
That’s all it takes. I feel like I can breathe again. Like everything is okay. Better than okay—perfect. Everything is perfect.
I squeeze the shirt tighter in my fist. I never want this to end. I don’t want her to ever stop touching me. Please, God, never let me forget exactly how this feels. If I can remember this, if I can hang onto this feeling, then nothing bad will ever matter.
Tiffani
We were in the bakery. Colt’s arm around me. His coffee, his cinnamon roll, the cigarette in my hand. He said something, then took a drink. I couldn’t hear him, but I recognized the look on his face. He played it straight as a yardstick whenever he made a joke.
I watched, waited. His long eyelashes, the dark stubble coming in on his jaw, the motion of his throat as he swallowed. I wanted to run the backs of my fingers across his cheek. But if I just waited…
He looked at me out of the corner of his eye.
When he saw that I saw him looking, he ducked his head and tried to fight the smile.
I felt myself laugh, but no sound came with it.
A distant part of my mind registered that I wasn’t sitting in the bakery with Colt. It felt the hot, dry dirt under my cheek growing wet with blood. It knew I hadn’t bled in more than fifty years, that blood itself hadn’t smelled like this to me since I was human. This was what blood smelled like to Colt. Not glowing life, but waning death.
I pushed that part of my mind away. I wanted to stay there with Colt, to have his arm around me even though I knew it wasn’t, to feel the way I felt when he looked at me to see if I thought his joke was funny.
Just one more minute. I just needed to stay there for one more minute. Then I would get back up and start picking my way across the minefield again.
Colt
I head down the pharmacy aisle, looking for the sutures and some rubbing alcohol. I’m not hurt, but the med kit is low on one and out of the other and you never know when you’re going to get shot or stabbed. Also, Tiff’s been out of town the last few days and I can’t stand to be in that fucking cabin staring at the walls by myself for another fucking second. So refilling the med kit it is.
Or trying to refill the med kit. I can’t find anything I’m looking for. Which is ridiculous since the Halo pharmacy only has four aisles. I’m pretty sure Beth Ann rearranges this place every couple of weeks so that people have to ask her where things are.
It’s easier to blame that nosy rip Beth Ann than to admit that I’m a little drunk and having some trouble focusing. If I cop to the drinking, then I have to remember why I’m drunk at two in the afternoon in town instead of back at the cabin, training.
There—rubbing alcohol. I grab a bottle. It takes me a couple more trips down the aisles before I find the sutures. For some reason they’re right next to the condoms.
Then I realize why. One of the brands the pharmacy carries is BawdyHeat. Vamp condoms.
I wonder if Tiffani uses these when she’s with vamp groupies. Have things ever gotten out of control enough that the groupie she was with needed stitches?
Thinking about Tiff’s fangs ripping into flesh makes me rock-hard. I know it’s messed up, but her biting me has been my go-to fantasy for the last four years. The idea of her doing it to someone else makes my throat hurt and my stomach clench.
I know she can’t help it. Primal things like sex and blood feed the crow magic that makes her a vamp. Tiff does what she needs to do to survive. Anyway, what did I think? That she would want to have sex with me? Who the fuck would want me?
Tiffani hasn’t even fed on me since that first time. We’re just friends…I think. I
think she thinks of me as a friend. But maybe I’m just another annoyance she can’t get rid of. Too stupid to take the hint and leave her alone.
If she wanted things to go further, she would’ve made a move by now. Her super-smell is so powerful she can probably smell exactly what I imagined us doing the last time I beat off. Am I just supposed to believe that in four years she hasn’t once noticed how badly I want her? Even without her super-smeller, she can probably hear my heart race every time I see her. She knows. There’s no way she doesn’t.
Maybe it’s because I’m drunk. Maybe it’s because I’m delusional. Maybe it’s because I miss Tiffani and I wish like hell she was missing me, too.
Whatever the reason, I pick up a box of vamp condoms and take them up to the counter with everything else.
Beth Ann smirks down at my items. “Will this be all for you?”
It hadn’t occurred to me before this very second that rubbing alcohol, sutures, and vamp condoms all together make it look like I’m about to go party with somebody cold. My face turns Whitney-red, but I don’t squirm.
“That’s it,” I say.
Beth Ann’s eyes gleam as she rings everything up. I wait for her to say something about how coffin fever must run in the family, but Beth Ann just takes my cash and gives me my change.
“Would you like a bag or do you need these handy?” she asks, batting her eyelashes at me.
I give her a flat stare. “A bag is fine.”
Once I’m in the Explorer, I throw the bag into the passenger seat and turn the key.
I can hear Ryder’s high-pitched giggle in my head. After all his ragging on me about girls, about how it wasn’t normal not to even be interested in sex, and after all my preaching at him and Tough about not getting caught up by the shit of this world, Ryder would have loved to see this go down.
“Happy birthday, asshole,” I say, putting the Explorer in gear and backing out.
Tiffani
