The Very Best of Charles De Lint

by Charles de Lint

  Apples felt like driving the car into the nearest lamppost, but then she reminded herself that whatever remote location he was directing her to would benefit her as well.

  “He raped and killed a twelve-year-old girl,” she said, her voice gone hard and cold.

  Her captor shook his head. “He was never connected to anything.”

  “He told me he did, you moron.”

  “Don’t matter. You still had no right to kill him.”

  “I never said I did.”

  “He told me you were coming for him—called me up, told me your name, where you worked, what you looked like.”

  Apples supposed that Gage hadn’t bothered to explain that he was already dead by that point.

  “So what’s it to you?” she asked.

  “He was my brother.”

  Now, that, Apples could understand.

  5

  Who turned me? I never learned her name. She just said she liked the look of me—the inside look of me. She drained me, took me away and watched over me for the three days until I rose as a vamp. Then she cut me loose.

  Yeah, of course we talked before I went home to face the music. She filled me in on the rules and regs. I don’t mean there’s vamp police, running around handing out tickets if you do something wrong. There’s just things you can do and things you can’t and she straightened me out on them. Gave me the low-down on all the mythology. Useful stuff. She never did get into why she turned me besides what I’ve already told you, so your guess is as good as mine.

  No, I never saw her again.

  6

  “How did I kill him?”

  “What?”

  “Your brother. How am I supposed to have killed him?”

  They were on the Queensway now, the multiple lane divided highway that bisected the city running east to west. Apples kept to the speed limit—100 kilometers—but they were already passing Bayshore Shopping Centre and about to leave the city. The last few kilometers they’d ridden in silence. The surviving Gage sibling rested his gun on his thigh and stared out the front windshield. He turned to Apples.

  “That’s one of the things I need to know.”

  “Have you ever killed anybody?” she asked.

  He shrugged. “A couple of guys. Once was in the middle of a holdup, the other time in jail. I never got connected to either one.”

  “How did it feel?”

  “What the hell kind of a question is that?”

  Apples shot him a glance. “Did it feel good? Did it feel righteous? Did you feel sad? Did it give you a hard-on?”

  “How did it feel for you?”

  “Like a waste.”

  “So you did kill Randall.”

  “I never said that.”

  “Anybody looks at you, they see this sweet little kid—what are you, sixteen?”

  I was when I died, she thought. And she hadn’t aged a day since. That wasn’t causing problems yet, but it would soon. Still, she only had to wait one more year. That was when Cassie turned sixteen and she planned to turn her. The thing about vamps is, they don’t get sick. And if you’ve got something wrong with you, it’s gone once you’re turned. Goodbye leg brace and asthma. Cassie didn’t know it, but Apples planned for them to be sixteen together. Forever. “I’m nineteen,” she told Gage.

  He nodded. “But everybody looks at you and just sees this sweet little kid. Nobody knows the monster hiding under your skin.”

  Apples shot him another look. That was about as good a way to put it as any. How much did he know? And how many people, if any, had he told?

  “I guess you’d know all about monsters,” she said. “Seeing how your little brother grew up to be one and you’re not exactly an angel yourself.”

  Anger flickered in his eyes and the gun rose to point at her.

  “You shoot me now,” she reminded him, “and you’re killing yourself as well.”

  “Just shut up and drive.”

  “I think we’ve already played that song.”

  7

  So what are my weaknesses? You mean, beyond getting staked or beheaded? Hey, how stupid do I look? Figure it out for yourself.

  Just kidding.

  Apparently, the way it works is that whatever meant the most to you when you were alive, becomes anathema to you when you’re dead. Not people, but things and ideas. So I guess if you did worship the sun, then it could fry you as a vamp. Same if you loved eating Italian, with all that garlic in the sauces. Or maybe you were way serious about church.

  Here’s a funny fact: pretty much any vampire turned in the past few decades can be warded off with chocolate. And if not chocolate, then some kind of junk food, not to mention cigarettes, coffee or beer. Junkies are probably the biggest problem for normal people since you can only ward them off with needles and drugs. There’s not much by way of sacred icons anymore.

  8

  Apples kept following her captor’s directions. Eventually they exited the Queensway and drove down increasingly small backroads in the rural area west of the city. When they finally reached a bumpy track that was only two ruts on the ground with branches raking the sides of the car, he had her stop.

  “Get out,” he said.

  She did, stretching her back muscles and looking around her with interest. She didn’t get out of the city much, but ever since she’d been turned, she’d had this real yearning to just run in the woods.

  Gage slid across the bench seat and joined her on her side of the car, the gun leveled at her once more.

  “So you killed Randall because he told you some B.S. story about boffing some twelve-year-old.”

  “Not to mention killing her.”

  “So how was that your business?”

  “Well, call me crazy, but I take offence to misogynist morons hurting kids.”

  “So you’re just some do-gooder.”

  “Not to mention his intention to do the same to me.”

  Gage gave a slow nod. “But I still don’t get how you killed him. You’re just some—”

  “Slip of a girl. I know.”

  “With a big mouth.”

  He frowned at her. His nervousness was a stronger scent now, some animal part of his brain already registering what the rest of him hadn’t worked out yet.

  “I just don’t get it,” he said.

  “And that’s where you made your mistake,” she told him. “That’s the question you should have asked yourself before you ever came by my house with your little party invitation and threatening my little sister.”

  The gun rose, muzzle pointing at her head.

  “You’re way out of your league, kid.”

  “I don’t know.” She grinned, showing him a pair of fangs. “See, I’m faster than you.”

  Her hand moved in a blur of motion, plucking the gun from his hand and flinging it a half-dozen feet away.

  “I’m stronger than you.”

  She grabbed his hand and twisted it, bending it up around his back, exerting pressure so that he couldn’t move.

  “And I’m hungry.”

  She bit his neck and the hollowed fangs sank deep. He began to jerk as she drew the blood up from his veins, but it was no use.

  It never was.

  * * *

  Afterwards, she sat down by his body and began to talk, conversing with the corpse as though it was asking her questions. She took her time in responding. After all, they had three days to wait.

  Normally she would have simply stashed the body and come back when it was time for it to rise, but considering the problems she’d already had with his brother, she didn’t feel like tempting fate a second time with one of these Gage boys. She called home on her cell phone and luckily got the answering machine, which let her leave a message without having to explain too much. Her parents would still be mad when she got home, but hey, she was nineteen now, no matter how young she might look.

  When she stashed the phone back in the pocket of her jacket, she went and found a good-sized branch that s
he could carve into a stake while she talked and waited.

  9

  Do I have any regrets? Sure. I can’t have babies, for one thing. Well, yeah, I can still have sex. I just can’t have a baby and that sucks. I always figured when I got old—you know, like in my twenties—I’d get married and have kids.

  I miss eating, too. I mean, I can eat and drink the same as you, but I can’t process it, so afterwards I have to go throw it up like some bulimic. It’s so gross. Annalee—she works at the coffee shop with me—caught me doing it one time and it was really awkward. She’s all, “Don’t do this to yourself. Trust me, you’re not fat. You need help to deal with it. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”

  “It’s not what you think,” I tell her. “I’ve just got a touch of stomach flu.”

  “Every time you eat you throw up,” she says, and I’m thinking, what? Are you keeping tabs on me? How weird is that? But I know she just means well.

  I guess the other thing I’m going to miss is growing old. I’ll always look sixteen, but inside I age the same as you. What happens when I’m all old and ancient? The only guys that’ll be my age—you know, in their thirties and forties—interested in being with me then are going to be these pedophile freaks. And who wants to hang out with sixteen-year-old boys forever?

  But I didn’t choose it and I’m not the kind to get all weepy and do myself in. I figure, if this is what I am, then I might as well make myself useful getting rid of losers like you and your brother. I guess I read too many superhero comics when I was a kid or something.

  And I really want this chance to give Cassie a shot at a better life. Well, a different one, anyway. She deserves to see what it’s like to walk around without her leg brace and bronchodilator.

  Maybe she’ll join me in this little crusade of mine, but it’ll have to be her choice. Just like getting turned has to be her choice. I’ll give her the skinny, the bad and the good, and she can decide. And it’s not like we have to kill anybody. I only do it when losers like you don’t leave me any choice. Most times, I just feed on someone until they get so weak they just can’t hurt anybody for a long time. I check up on them from time to time—a girl gets hungry, after all—and if they’ve gone back to their evil ways, I turn them into these anemics again. They usually figure it out. When they don’t…well, that’s what stakes are for, right?

  My weakness? I guess I can tell you that. It’s anything to do with Easter. I used to be an Easter maniac—I loved every bit of it. I guess because it’s like Halloween, a serious candy holiday, but without the costumes. I was never one for dressing up and scary stuff never turned me on. Good thing, the way things worked out. Imagine if the very thought of vamps and ghouls was my nemesis. I’d be long gone by now. But Easter’s tough. I have to avoid the stores—which is not easy, but better than trying to avoid Christmas—and play sick on the day itself.

  10

  Apples saw Gage’s eyes move under his lids. She didn’t get up from where she was kneeling on the ground beside his shoulder, just reached over for her now-sharpened stake and lifted it. Gage’s eyes opened.

  “How…how do you live with yourself…?” he asked.

  Apples shivered. She’d never stopped to think that he could actually hear everything she’d been saying. She’d only talked to pass the time. Because there was no one else she could talk to about it.

  “The only other choice is where you’re going,” she said.

  “I welcome it.”

  When he said that, forgotten memories returned to her. The nightmare she’d had to undergo through her own three days of change from dead human to what she was now. It was like swimming through mud, trying to escape the clinging knowledge of the worst that people were capable of doing to each other, but drowning in it at the same time. Not for three days, but for what felt like an eternity. It had been such a horrifying experience that the only way she’d managed to deal with it was by simply blocking it away.

  How had she forgotten?

  Better yet, how could she forget it again? The sooner the better.

  “That’s because you’re a loser,” she said.

  “And you’re going to do this to your sister.”

  “You don’t know anything about me or my sister!”

  She brought the stake down harder than necessary. Long after he was dead, she was still leaning over him, pressing the stake down.

  Finally, she let it go and rocked back onto her ankles. She got up and dragged his body back into the car, wiped the vehicle down for any fingerprints she might have left in it. She soaked a rag in gas, stuck it in the gas tank, and lit it.

  She was out of sight of the car and walking fast when the explosion came. She didn’t turn to look, but only kept walking. Her mind was in that dark place Gage had called back into existence.

  How could she put Cassie through that?

  But how could she go on, forever, alone?

  For the first time since she’d been turned, she didn’t know what to do.

  Two: Cassandra

  Apples has a secret and I know what it is.

  Her real name’s Appoline, but everybody calls her Apples, just like they call me Cassie instead of Cassandra, except for Mom. She always calls us by our given names. But that’s not the secret. It’s way bigger than having some weird name.

  * * *

  My sister is so cool—not like I could ever be.

  I was born with a congenital birth defect that left me with one leg shorter than the other so I have to wear this Frankenstein monster leg brace all the time. At least that’s what the kids call it. “Here comes the bride of Frankenstein,” they used to say when I came out for recess—I was always last to get outside. I’m glad Apples doesn’t know, because she’d beat the crap out of them and you can’t do that just ’cause people call you names.

  I’ve also got asthma real bad, so I always have to carry my puffer around with me. Even if I didn’t have the leg brace and could run, the asthma wouldn’t let me. I get short of breath whenever I try to do anything too strenuous, but I’m lucky ’cause I’ve only had to go to the hospital a few times when an attack got too severe.

  I know you shouldn’t judge people by their physical attributes, but we all do, don’t we? And if you just aren’t capable of simple things like walking or breathing properly, you’re not even in the running so far as most people are concerned. People see any kind of a disability and they immediately think your brain’s disabled as well. They talk to me slower and never really listen to what I’m saying.

  Oh, I’m not feeling sorry for myself. Honest. I’m just being pragmatic. I’m always going to be this dorky kid with the bum leg who can’t breathe. I could live to be eighty years old, with a whole life behind me, but inside, that’s who I’ll always be.

  But Apples has never seen or treated me that way, not even when we have a fight, which isn’t that often anyway. I know that sounds odd, because siblings are just naturally supposed to argue and fight, but we don’t. We get along and share pretty much everything. Or at least we did up until the night of that Bryan Adams concert. She went with a bunch of friends and then didn’t come back from it until four days later. Boy, were Mom and Dad mad. I was just really worried, and then I guess I felt hurt because she wouldn’t tell me where she’d been.

  “It’s not that I won’t,” she’d tell me. “It’s that I can’t. That chunk of time is just like this big black hole in my head.”

  But I know she remembers something from it. She just doesn’t think I can handle whatever it was.

  And that was when she changed. Not slowly, over time, like everybody does, you get older, you stop playing with Barbies, start listening to real music. But bang, all of a sudden. She was always fun, but after that four-day-long night out, she became this breezy, confident person that I still adored, but felt I had to get to know all over again.

  That wouldn’t be a problem, but she also got all X-Files, too. All mysterious about simple things. Like I’ll never forget her
face when I announced just before dinner one day that I was now a vegetarian. I simply couldn’t condone the slaughter of innocent animals just so that I could live. “You are what you eat,” I told them, not understanding Apples’s anguished expression until much later.

  And Easter was particularly weird when it came around the following year. Used to be her favourite holiday, bar none, but that year she claimed she’d developed a phobia towards it and wouldn’t have anything to do with any of it. When Dad asked why, she said with more exasperation than usual, “That’s why they call it a phobia, Dad. It’s an unreasonable fear.”

  Okay, maybe those aren’t the best examples, but when you add everything together. Like there was this period when I thought she was bulimic, but although she was throwing up a lot after meals, she didn’t have any of the other symptoms. She never seems overly concerned about her weight, she doesn’t lose weight. In fact, she just seems to keep getting stronger and healthier all the time. So I couldn’t figure out what and where she was eating.

  She also stopped having a period. I caught her throwing out unused tampons one day around the time she was usually menstruating, so I watched out for it the next month, but she threw them out then, too, like she didn’t want anyone to know that she wasn’t still using them. It seemed unlikely that she was pregnant—and as the months went by, it was obvious she wasn’t—and she sure couldn’t be hitting menopause.

  By now you’re thinking I’m this creepy kid, always spying on my sister, but it’s not like that. I came across all these things by accident. The only reason I looked further into them was that I was worried. Wouldn’t you have been, if it was happening to your sister? And the worst was I had no one to talk to about it. I couldn’t bring it up with my parents, I sure wasn’t going to talk about it to anyone outside of the family, and I couldn’t begin to think of a way to ask Apples herself. I couldn’t follow her around either, not with my leg brace and having to catch my breath all the time. So while I know she snuck out at night, I could never follow to see where she was going, what she was doing.