by Jade Alters
“Thank you, Magister,” I say as I bow. It’s something I always pictured saying to Father, not this jolly old knockoff. Yet somehow, the tone of my voice belies more feeling than any three I’ve ever spoken to Father.
Emery,
With the Council’s dismissal, I vanish back to my room. More specifically, to the bathroom, where I plop down on the toilet and tune into Mother’s conference space with a finger on my forehead.
“Emery, report,” Mother calls out from the blue-green, swirling nebula that encloses us.
“Reporting,” I let her know I’m there. I step out into the eye of the spectral cyclone that keeps out listeners of any kind. “I just had my meeting with the Council. I’ve put any of their…concerns to rest.” The word scratches my throat on its way up. “They are deliberating over my request for a curfew extension now. Magister Reynold all but assured me I would get it.”
“Assurances mean little, Emery. You know this,” Mother clips. My lips pop open to object. I catch myself - thank God. Mother and I are left looking more alike than ever with the identical shock on our faces. What was I even going to say? I don’t have time to worry about it now.
“Er, yes Mother,” I nod, “I’ll report again as soon as I have a concrete answer.”
“No, you won’t,” Mother counters, “Once you have the necessary clearance, you’ll travel to San Francisco through the Tether. I shouldn’t have to tell you you’ll need to put a trick up to cover your tracks. Your cousins managed to track the Vampire there. Around the fringe of the Academy training ground.” The Vampire, she says with such poisonous disdain. Not Darius Jecks. Not her son’s best friend of fifteen years. “Locate him. Secure him if you can. Eliminate him if you can’t. We’ll send along a recovery party, for a fugitive or a body. That part is up to you.”
I hardly believe my ears. Up to you. A choice. I don’t remember the last time Mother allowed me one of those. She may never have, before. After all, choice is a privilege children must earn in the Dalshak family, at which point they cease to be children. This couldn’t be… I thought the day would never come.
“Emery. Do you understand?” Mother asks. I flinch when I feel something on my shoulder. A hand. Her hand. The touch electrifies me. It incinerates my hesitation. “Or shall I give this task to another?”
“I understand,” I say, and almost gag in the process. I force myself to look Mother in the eye. What is that look on her face? The tilted lip. The raised brows. The look almost resembles the face from my memory, the one I saw reflected in my puzzle cube.
“Good. Do not disappoint me, daughter.” Mother releases my shoulder, and her conference space swirls out of existence. I split the blackness that remains by opening my eyelids.
I put my chin down in my collar to stifle the sniffles that Helena might overhear, if she’s back from class. I wrap my hands around myself in a tight hug that I wish had come from someone else.
Between The City Lights
Darius Jecks,
Hidden Corner, San Francisco
Man, this fucking blows. I mean, sure, we all run cold. Sure, I’m used to it. But this is different. I haven’t felt the light of day on my skin in weeks. Contrary to what every movie, book and television show would tell you, it’s actually nice every once in a while. But it’s a distant memory now. I’m living the life of a nightcrawler, and I never planned on doing that again. Forced to feed only enough to sustain energy for the next hunt. Confined to shadows. Solitary.
Sure, it sounds romantic, but I’m really just a glorified squatter with fangs. I spend the daylight hours bundled up with the rest of the vagrants who don’t have a place. In the worst parts of the city, where stabbings and gunfire might deter the average, is where I find my sanctuary. I sleep shoulder-to-shoulder with my residentially-challenged roommates who are, of course, off-limits for feeding. We care little about the showers of hot lead that pour in through the windows a few times a week for very different reasons, but I’ve got more common ground with them than I do with anyone else in this Godforsaken city. We have a symbiotic relationship wherein they give me a concrete place to return to, away from the public eye, and I don’t drain them dry. The last renegade drops in the bottom of a walking juice-box are always sour, anyway. They also refrain from revealing my supernatural nature to the world at large, though I could hardly care less about keeping the Academy’s secrets now.
We cross paths at the shift of light toward the end of day, and rarely otherwise. Two women that look like clothes hung on defective manakins and a man who’s really just a skeleton with a thin personality come in through the patchwork door just as dusk turns to nightfall. The last orange rays of the day come in with them and drain back out before it closes behind them.
“How we looking tonight, ladies and gents?” I yawn at the only three friends I have left in the world as they drag themselves towards the bedrolls in the corner of the room. I stand up and stretch out my legs.
“It was a cold one today,” the gruff, skeletal man tells me, “so there aren’t many people out for walks.” Yet another benefit of treating my half-empty bloodbags with a little respect. I get an idea what the savannah looks like, before I go out on my nightly prowl.
“Damn. I hate house-hunting,” I groan as I make my way past them, for the door.
“Darius?” one of the manakin-ladies calls to me.
“Lauren?” I answer.
“Lisa,” she corrects me. I shrug to make sure they don’t get the impression I care. My situation is a little too precarious for such comforts. She scratches her arm, possibly in withdrawal again, while she asks, “Could you…maybe try not to…um, feed…on this street this time?”
“Why, one of your panhandlers show up for work today with a fancy new two-hole tattoo?” I ask. I belie no hint of actual sympathy, but neither do I go out of my way to sound aggressive. I maintain a tone of neutrality that somehow seems to terrify my roommates even more. “Well? Is that what happened?”
“I-I-I don’t mean to complain,” Lisa shivers. “It’s just…Miranda showed up today with a migraine and-”
“Then don’t complain. And don’t tell me where to feed,” I cut her short. “We’ve been over this. I’m not killing anyone, which is…challenging,” I say, making sure to lean as close to Lisa with my fangs flared as I can while I say it, without touching her, “for me.” I take a deep breath, draw back and crack a toothy grin for her. It doesn’t alleviate any of her fear, but then I don’t really mean it to. This only works for everyone if the proper parties are frightened of the other. “If I don’t feed, I waste away. The way I’m doing things now, we all walk away from things with a headache. A much more pleasant alternative, for Miranda, than if I really couldn’t deal with my dang headaches anymore.”
“No-no-no, you’re ri-right,” Lisa nods, eyes darting everywhere in the room but mine.
“Glad we understand one another,” I nod, patting her shoulder and gliding around her for the door. I slip out into the descending night.
My joints creak and crack into motion as I pace down the sidewalk-lined hovels made from old apartment ruins and sheet metal patches. There’s not much human juice left in there to lube the old machine. There never is, by the time I get up for the next hunt. Not with the way I’ve been feeding. I stretch my arms behind my head and walk on the edge of dusk as it slices across the underbelly of San Francisco’s worst streets. I glance through brick-shattered windows and gaping holes in the brick walls of other shacks like the one I’ve just come from. My night vision is nowhere near as sharp as it was when I was at the Academy, but I can still make out a few husks that had once been humans. Honestly, it might be doing a few of them a favor to suck out the last little bit of what makes them tick. But I keep walking. No matter what I said to Lisa, I keep walking, right off our street. Damn her.
I know I shouldn’t, but I wander towards the invisible wall of the world I left behind, instead. Really, what’s the harm? The illusory curtain around the Tethe
r is good cover, if I’m spotted, after all. I’m not quite ready to admit, even in my own head, why it’s really worth it to take the risk of wandering so close to the Academy training ground. I don’t miss them, I tell myself. Not Serge. Not any of the other non-food items I shared the Academy with. No one. I’m fine. I’ve got no problem admitting to myself or anyone else that it’d be nice if the VampKing at least returned my messages. I can’t believe, after so many months, he still has no idea the Dalshaks double-crossed him. They must be intercepting my messages to him. That’s the only reason he wouldn’t be answering. Why he wouldn’t be looking for me. It must be.
I round a couple corners and stretch my legs zipping through side streets. Newspaper scraps and discarded soda cans blow around in the wind behind my heels. Even as rusty as I am, I span a distance that would take most humans twenty minutes in a flash of seconds. I scrape my shoes on the sidewalk just outside Valencia street. Long rows of bars shimmer alive in the near-nightfall. Silhouettes file through their light. Here, they’re more than just walking meals. They’re a reminder that, even after a lifetime of numbness, actions still have consequences. Even if I don’t feel them like I used to. I run my fingers along the grit of the huge stones that build up the particular back alley I’m creeping in. No matter how the street crews scrub, they couldn’t quite get the last stain of the soot off the walls. The scars of Cece’s flame. This is the place where everything changed. Not just for me, either, but because of my actions.
If I’d just controlled my damn appetite, like I’d trained to… If I’d just picked a different sap to sap the blood from…maybe Cece would have chosen differently. Hell, the choice that backstabber Horace gave her wouldn’t even have been possible. If I wasn’t the one that’d bloodied her brother up right in front of her, I might still be the VampKing’s ambassador to the little alliance the Dalshaks have brewing. The Kyrie, they call themselves. I call them hemorrhaging assholes, knowing full well what they’d call me. Worse than a squatter. Worse than an outcast. Monster. Abomination. They showed their true colors when they cast me aside so easily as a test for their pet Dragon. The Dalshaks are traditional, alright. They follow the ways of the old Academy. The one that thought things like me had to be eradicated, not integrated. If only I could reach the VampKing.
I shake it off as best I can before I take a single step out onto the Valencia. I need to focus here, or there’s bound to be another feeding mishap. I can’t afford that now. Not when the only thing standing between me and a public manhunt is Lisa and my other transient roommates. I slip through the shadow that sheathes my side of the street like a gust of wind. I peek down every alley I pass, in search of outliers with no idea of the risk they’re taking. No idea of how close they are to the border of a hidden world that would scare the tits off them.
I lick the top row of my teeth in anticipation of the feed. I feel two bladed daggers extend down from the roof of my dry mouth. There it is - some teenage punk all on his own with a green mohawk, conspicuously close to an alleyway opening. I’m already planning what phrase to whisper in his ear to mortify him before I tear down the alley, when a horrendous ring stabs my ears. It’s a sound I couldn’t forget if I tried. The sound that tolled in my favorite part of the year - a new term at the Academy. I freeze with my sprinting foot down. I should just go. I need to feed. I’m already groggy. The kid’s an easy target, and to be honest he looks like he could use a little sip and slip to straighten up his slouch. But…it’s been some time since I’ve heard someone come down through the Tether. If I don’t check it out, it’ll be on my mind the rest of the night.
“Dammit,” I mutter, and turn down one of the countless back alleys off Valencia instead. Mohawk man gets a pass tonight. I pierce the translucent curtain that separates the Academy training ground. I rush through side streets, stirring trash and hanging clothes on lines all around me. I stop silently on a pinpoint just around the corner from where the Tether shoots down through the earth.
I peek around at the door to the little broom closet. The door closes behind a dark tan girl with golden-brown eyes. Her silky black hair sings a song of memory in the back of my head. She stretches her legs on her way up the stairs from the non-descript doorway that cloaks the entrance to the Academy. Her eyes wander cluelessly from one side of the alleyway to the other, as if she’s just come here to sightsee. That’s when it hits me - she’s anything but clueless. If that’s the impression I got, it’s exactly the one she wanted me to get. Holy shit. Emery. That’s right. That little snot-nosed puzzle addict is old enough to attend the Academy now. Only, that’s not exactly who I see in front of me now. This person is much more dangerous - a woman as stunning and cold as her mother. I turn around before she’s made it halfway up the stairs and break into a sprint.
“Ow! Shit!” I murmur to myself when my nose flattens sideways against an invisible wall. I just had to get a better look at her. Emery strolls out with one finger extended past the others, to maintain the wall she’s used to box me in. She finds my face with this confusing mixture of amusement and disinterest I’ve only seen on Dalshak women. I turn around to face her directly, because there’s something else in those eyes too - recognition. I’m not just the mission her family undoubtedly gave her. She remembers me. “The prodigal son lets me go. The prodigy daughter brings me in,” I smirk at her.
“Hello Darius,” Emery says. A hint of a smile rolls across her lips while they’re in motion, but rolls right out as soon as they’re still. I can read her about as well as a book with no words. “You must be so lonely.”
“E-e-excuse me?” I put up a shield of laughter. Of all the things she could say. There’s something I never knew about the old Emery - she certainly knows how to disarm a guy.
“I didn’t think it would take me long to find you, but I definitely didn’t think you’d come to me. I wasn’t down here two minutes and you came running,” Emery rattles off, like the contents of my mind are just painted on the walls! She holds herself with such confidence, too. Like her brother, only three times as infuriating. She’s in a musty, magically-cloaked back alley with a man-eating killer on the lamb and I’d bet there’s not a single hair standing up on the back of her neck. That makes me want to sink my teeth into it even more than what her family did to me.
“Well, I’m only human,” I shrug. I lean back against the illusory wall that blocks my escape, as if to taunt her. Really, I shoot a few glances up to see how high she’s stacked it. Looks like nine feet, about. Much bigger than that, and she’ll need more light than she has in this little alley after sunset. “Oh wait, I’m not.” I pretend to realize. I shoot straight for her, fangs bared.
Emery’s palm snaps up to erect a new wall between us. Her choice in tricks does catch me off-guard, for a second. This one isn’t see-through; it’s a mirror. I pause, paralyzed at the sight of the monster rushing at me, monstrous teeth ready to tear me to pieces. The red tinge in his eyes haunts me, two blood moons set in a pale, boney moonscape. He really does look like a monster. In my moment of hesitation, I hear the finger-snap. Emery scatters the shards of the mirror-wall before her like a glassy frag grenade. Its pieces slice the outsides of my arms and collar bone. A few shards embed themselves deep in my thigh tissue. That precious red currency that buys me time spills out in puddles and rivers around my feet. I look down at my frightened reflection in the scarlet mirrors, then up at her. Emery’s hand shakes out towards me. She can’t call the mirrored shards back just yet. I’ll heal. Then I’ll charge. But she doesn’t have enough light to conjure another trick. I stomp a single step toward her. She slides one away, back toward the Tether.
“Go on. Go back to…mommy dearest,” I dare her. “Tell her how bad you cut me up. She’ll be so proud.”
“She-she-she’ll send a party to get you, either way. A hostage or a body.” Emery’s words are shattered by a shiver over her lips. She looks at me differently now, from when she first emerged from the Tether. I’m not sure what exactly flushed it
out of her, but a large measure of that annoying confidence is gone. Without it, she resembles her old self. A half-brainwashed little girl with a fascinating puzzle on her hands.
“So you’re off...scott-free, huh?” I challenge. I take another, bloody stomp towards her. She takes a step back down towards the Tether. “Why hesitate, then? What’s holding you back?” I ask. Emery takes a deep breath. The tremors still in her hand as I lean down over her, one step higher on the staircase. “Go on…show me what you’ve become.” I spit the words with such fierce venom it surprises even me. Since when do I care this much about Emery Dalshak? Serge’s oddball little sister…the girl always in the background. I step down onto the very same stair as she. I inch closer to her, close enough to feel her threatening palm on my clammy chest.
“You first,” Emery dares me right back. The look in her eye is anything but daring. She brings her smooth, dark face up to mine. Our faces stay flat, each a silent warning to the other. Do it, or I will. An inescapable moment of tension swallows us both, then spits us out.
Emery closes her fist. The mirror shards stuck in me disintegrate. Her fingers flicker open for another trick, but not before my teeth sink in her throat. I feel the scratch of her throat between my jaw with the rush of warm fluid. It swirls around the inside of my lips - an irony tonic that fulfills my strength. Seals my wounds. I clamp down another quarter-inch, just deep enough for her to feel my toothy daggers on something vital. I feel her body loosen in my pressing hands. That’s it. Her body has accepted death. She’s finished. By the time Emery realizes she is, in fact, still alive, I’m long gone. The kinks I dimpled in the outside of her arteries pop back out.
I wait at the mouth of an alley to Valencia for her. Emery appears from a circular window just behind the illusory curtain, a portal, with one hand clamped over her bleeding throat.
